Getting Off The Griefmobile
by Annakovsky
Summary: Post-Chosen installment number 3 (a sequel to my Now Leaving Sunnydale and Now Entering Elsewhere), in which the Scoobs settle down, fight the return of the First, and hook up. We got DawnAndrew, XanderWillow and possibly FaithGiles.
1. Default Chapter

SUMMARY: Post-Chosen installment 3 (a sequel to my "Now Leaving Sunnydale" and "Now Entering Elsewhere"), in which the Scoobs settle down and I find out what it's like on those things they call 'ships.  
  
SPOILERS: All of BtVS, as you could probably figure out from the whole "post-Chosen" thing.  
  
'SHIPS: Because the first time out of the harbor you should make things as complicated as possible, I somehow ended up with Dawn/Andrew, some slight Xander/Willow and there's Giles/Faith friendship. This is a WIP at the moment, with self-contained episodes, so any of those may move towards more intensity, though I think not so much with the Giles/Faith. But I freely admit that I really have no idea where I'm going with this.   
  
RATING: PG  
  
DISCLAIMER: All characters, settings, universe, etc, belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy, who have all the rights and all the cash.  
  
ARCHIVING: Absolutely, but ask first so I know where it is.  
  
FEEDBACK: Please! Send to annakovsky@hotmail.com  
  
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Getting Off the Griefmobile  
  
By Annakovsky  
  
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CHAPTER ONE  
  
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In the end, the decision of where they were going to set up shop was made by the Griefmobile itself, which finally gave up the ghost during their second time through Kentucky. Apparently twice through a state that provoked Xander's incest jokes was too much even for the bravery of a bus that had driven out of a collapsing town, spent a fair amount of time with newly-made Slayers who didn't know their own strength, seen two oceans, fourteen rivers, five lakes and one geyser, gone "accidentally" off-roading with Faith, and run over two medium-sized demons. But really, you couldn't blame it.  
  
At the very moment Xander said "Incest: a game the whole family can play!" the bus gave a coughing noise and sighed (much as Giles had on hearing the word "incest" for the fourth time that morning), and smoke began pouring out of the engine. Willow quickly pulled the bus over and they calmly and quickly exited. For the most part.  
  
"Andrew, yelling 'We're all going to die' isn't terribly helpful, now is it?" Giles said when they were all on the shoulder, taking off his glasses and polishing them. Andrew shrugged sheepishly.   
  
"Where the heck are we?" asked Dawn groggily. She'd been asleep before all the yelling and the fleeing.   
  
"You obviously missed the incest jokes," said Willow.   
  
"Kentucky, huh?" said Dawn knowingly.  
  
"Got it in one."  
  
Faith had gone around and popped the hood, and she and Xander stood looking at the engine. Buffy joined them, and pretended to look at it knowingly for a minute before giving up.  
  
"So, uh, is it fixable?" she asked.   
  
"Oh, I have no idea," said Xander. "I just thought it would be more manly of me to stand over here. And I have to tell you, out of my vast expertise in school bus repair, I think the problem has something to do with all this smoke." Buffy rolled her eyes at him and turned to Faith.  
  
"Well, B, I think our friend Mr. Griefmobile is kaput," she said. "Stuff's melted together here, see?" Buffy looked at the section Faith was pointing to. It sort of looked like the time she had put Dawn's favorite Barbie in the oven to hide it from her and then had forgotten about it until after Mom had preheated the oven for dinner. And boy, had that ever been over-reaction city, by the way. She imagined that that the look did not bode well for school buses either.   
  
"Wonderful," said Buffy. "Giles?" He came over. "Does Triple A do buses?"  
  
"And more importantly," said Xander. "Does Kentucky have that new-fangled electricity yet?" No one dignified that with a response.  
  
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A few hours later, the bus had been towed and they were all hanging around outside the towing place with their bags, waiting for Giles to finish settling up inside. It was hot and sticky, and a fly buzzed half-heartedly near the bench where Buffy and Willow sat, both in sunglasses and flip-flops. Despite the heat, Dawn and Andrew were enthusiastically playing some kind of game that seemed to involve stepping on each other's feet, which meant the two of them were dancing around as each tried to keep their feet safe while trying to land on the other one's toes.  
  
"Hey! No elbows!" said Dawn. "You are such a cheater!" She pushed him slightly, laughing. Andrew was grinning dopily.  
  
"Oh my God," Buffy said under her breath to Willow, tipping down her sunglasses to stare at the two and roll her eyes. "Tell me I'm not going to have that for an in-law."  
  
"So glad I'm an only child," said Willow.  
  
"Stupid monks. They couldn't have programmed her with good taste?"  
  
"Well, they did make her out of you," teased Willow.  
  
"And yet!" said Buffy, grinning.   
  
Giles walked out of the small office of the towing place, looking alarmed when Dawn and Andrew nearly leaped right into him.  
  
"What on earth are you doing?" he asked reflexively.  
  
"Oh, well, we're playing this game where…" Andrew started.  
  
"That's nice," said Giles, turning to the others. "I called us some cabs. The council has a house just outside Louisville that we can use for the time being."  
  
"The council has a house? Here? May I ask why?" asked Xander.  
  
"It's an ideal location for keeping an eye on the Hellmouths in Cleveland and in Nashville. It serves as a kind of central Headquarters. I believe they may even have kept a substantial library."  
  
"There's a Hellmouth in Nashville?" asked Willow. Giles nodded distractedly.   
  
"I *knew* there was a logical explanation for country," muttered Buffy as the cabs pulled up and they all trailed after Giles, as usual. Much of the trip had consisted of Giles enthusiastically leading the way around historical sites and national parks, throwing facts over his shoulder to the rest who spent their time dragging themselves behind him with notably less gusto. The longer they were all together, the more this felt like a family vacation. All it needed was a station wagon and someone getting carsick to make it complete.   
  
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The house was in what felt like an old country neighborhood, with winding narrow roads and huge old trees everywhere. They passed a lot of kids riding bikes or walking down the road in swimsuits, towels slung over their shoulders. One was balancing an inflated beach ball on her handlebars and swerving rather erratically, to her friends' hysterical delight. The cab driver gave them a wide berth.  
  
The house itself was on a hill, a huge white house with pillars, looking like it could've been an old plantation manor. The driveway was long and curving, with an iron gate at its entrance that was propped open. They spilled out of the cabs and gaped at the building. A porch wrapped around it with the requisite Southern rocking chairs, and large oak trees shaded it. There was a plaque by the door discretely stating "Council of Watchers".  
  
Giles picked up his bag as the cabs drove away and began walking purposefully towards the house, again throwing information over his shoulder at them as they scrambled to get their stuff together.  
  
"Now, I haven't been here in years, but I believe there are a number of bedrooms which were kept furnished for guests. Due to the decrease of demonic activity in Cleveland two years ago, this headquarters was declared inactive and the Watchers recalled to England to keep an eye on the situation in Liverpool, but the house has been kept up rather well in case of emergencies, and I think we'll find that it will serve our needs, at least for the time being." He unlocked the door with one of the keys on his official Watcher's key ring. Giles had finally acquired access to the Council's funds and, as the last remaining active Watcher in contact with the legal representation, was declared the new Council head and given latitude to use the funds to rebuild it as he saw fit. This included keys to all the Council owned buildings around the world, plus a complimentary keychain forming the letters "CoW" in bronze. It was very tasteful. It was also, of course, the subject of endless mocking. Giles only really minded the mooing noises. ("Oh really, you lot. Again?")  
  
The house in fact had eight bedrooms, four on the first floor and four on the second. It also had an enormous kitchen and dining room, and library that held a good number of useful books, though not, of course, the most rare editions which had perished in England with the Council. It was also, for no apparent reason, equipped with an enormous ballroom with quite a few good-sized rooms connected to it that were probably originally for storage.   
  
"What's with the ballroom, Giles?" Buffy asked.  
  
"I believe that was here when the Council purchased the building, built for the debutante daughter of the original owner."  
  
"Weird. It'll make a great training room, though, if we just get some gymnastic equipment in here."  
  
They all wandered around the house wide-eyed, calling to each other to exclaim over everything. Each of them claimed a bedroom, since there were enough for each to have their own. The rooms were small but airy and light, simply decorated and furnished with beds, dressers and desks, white sheets and yellow comforters. Big windows looked out on the lush lawn, leafy trees and green grass, with horses in the distant field beyond their yard. Buffy's room had a gable with a window seat.   
  
Buffy and Faith eagerly discussed how they could optimally lay out the training room, and Xander pointed out that one of the rooms off the ballroom would make a great TV room and that another could hold a pool table. Giles and Willow got excited over the library, which had even more books than they had expected, beautiful wooden shelves, tables and leather covered chairs.   
  
"Oh yeah, I could stay here," Buffy said casually, and when they all nodded she realized it was true. The Griefmobile had chosen well.  
  
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To Be Continued...  
  
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Notes: I'm from Kentucky, which is possibly the most beautiful state of them all, so the mocking is in good fun. But if anyone from out-of-state tries it, I get peeved, so watch it.  
  
Also, there really is a house that looks just like that (though I may have overhyped it) in the neighborhood where I grew up, so that's where this is set. I have no idea what the inside is like, but my dad grew up in a house in Louisville that actually had a ballroom in it (as well as six bedrooms and a million fireplaces and stuff), so there you go. I think he and his friends used the ballroom for kickball. 


	2. Cloud Watching

Getting Off The Griefmobile  
  
By Annakovsky  
  
See part 1 for all relevant info and disclaimer.  
  
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CHAPTER TWO  
  
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Xander put a hammock up in the backyard, which he went to when he wanted to be alone. Which was fairly often. He didn't know it, but the others were a little worried about him – he alternated between almost frantically telling jokes and being very, very quiet. He hadn't noticed this himself.   
  
One day in July he was out in the hammock staring up at the underside of the leaves and the blue sky behind them and thinking about death.   
  
Suddenly someone gave the hammock a big swing and his whole body spasmed in surprise as he tried to keep his balance. He went to yell at whoever was interrupting his private time, but when he saw that it was Willow, he remembered. When they were kids they used to sneak up on Jesse when he was in the hammock at his house and try to swing it before he noticed them, 'cause he would really freak. Remembering made him smile for a split-second before it triggered the memory of Jesse exploding into dust in front of him.   
  
Willow must have gone through the same mental sequence, because her face fell at the exact same moment it hit him. Willow, the sole co-keeper of his childhood memories. She looked tentative now.  
  
"Hey," he said, and tried to smile.  
  
"Hey. Sorry."  
  
"S'okay. You want to join me?" He moved over in the hammock to make space.  
  
"Yeah," she said, getting in next to him. The hammock squished them together, and Xander adjusted his position so they'd fit more comfortably. Willow leaned her head on his shoulder and curled up beside him. He was aware of her boobies pressing into his side. Just Willow, he thought to himself. Best friend forever, currently lesbian, regular ol' standard issue Willow. Nothing to get excited about.   
  
"So, is what you're doing out here good staring or bad staring?" she asked.  
  
"Just your average one-eyed staring," he said wryly. Neither of them laughed. Instead they just lay there for a bit, comfortably. Willow felt reassuringly alive and warm and solid – her head was making his right arm fall asleep. He could almost pretend that they were eight years old again and lying in her backyard looking for shapes in the clouds. He always saw fire-engines. Willow never saw the same thing twice.   
  
"You're not doing so good, huh?" Willow said finally. He didn't say anything. Suddenly it felt like there was a weight on his chest that he needed to be very still to avoid disturbing, because otherwise it would collapse and crush him. Willow just waited out the pause, though.  
  
"I'm okay," he said finally. That one cloud looked like Krusty the Clown, and the one beside it looked like a knife. No, like a popsicle. Not a knife.  
  
"Right, Xander," Willow said. "You're just peachy." He stared harder at the clouds. A plane was tracing a line very high up. "You thinking about Anya?" she asked after a second. Of course, Anya was the one thing he was determinedly not thinking about. He was spending most of his time not thinking about her, in fact. It was kind of a full time thing.  
  
"I don't think I'm ever going to date again," he said eventually. It was a way to sidestep the subject, since he had realized Willow was prepared to wait him out indefinitely. "Either I get them killed or they try to kill me. It's hazardous."  
  
"Xander..."  
  
"No, seriously." Words started pouring out of him. "Does it ever worry you? I mean, who are we going to meet? The only people we ever date are all in the demon-killing or demon–being business, and that just never works out well. For instance - Buffy: two vamps and a soldier in an undercover demon-killing unit. You: a werewolf, fellow witch and a Slayer. Me: Cordelia, who in high school practically qualified as a demon and who spent time this year as a higher being, an ex-vengeance demon, and, hey, I lost my virginity to a Slayer."  
  
"Yeah... I cried after I found out about you and Faith, by the way."  
  
"You did?" Xander turned to look at her, surprised. Then he gave a wry smile. "Well, I think I cried after me and Faith too. Not the most fulfilling experience of my life. Which is my point. Dating and me, not good. No more."  
  
"Oh, c'mon... I mean, yeah, but I dunno, Xander, we'll meet people. Things will be okay."  
  
"Maybe," he said. "But I don't even want to bother going through that whole getting to know someone thing again. Like, 'And then I left my fiancée at the altar, but we were probably going to get back together when she was brutally killed in the apocalypse and our whole town collapsed into a crater. You may have seen it on Dateline... more beer nuts?' I mean, it's... tiring. To even think about."  
  
"I know what you mean," she said. They looked up at the clouds in silence for awhile.  
  
"Look, it's Principal Snyder," Willow said, pointing up at a cloud that really bore a creepily striking resemblance. They watched it float dreamily across the sky.  
  
"I kind of miss Sunnydale," Xander said after a minute. "Is that stupid? I miss the Bronze and the way all the alleys looked the same, and I even miss the cemeteries. I miss Louisa Jefferson, 1898-1961, with that ugly-ass angel on top, you know?"  
  
"That angel gave me the creeps. It always looked like it was watching you."  
  
"Yeah, no kidding. But it bothers me that it's gone."   
  
After a second, Willow lifted herself up and kissed him on the cheek.   
  
"I love you, Xander," she said, before settling herself back down onto his shoulder. This surprised him enough that it threw off his automated joke-everything-off response and he didn't say anything at all for a few seconds. The place where her lips touched felt warm and happy, like the cells in his cheek were doing a little joyful Snoopy dance.  
  
"I love you, too," he said finally. Loving Willow was the one certainty in a world where, one by one, schools and towns and lives kept collapsing.  
  
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TBC... 


	3. Settling for Less and Enjoying It

Getting Off The Griefmobile  
  
By Annakovsky  
  
See part 1 for all relevant info and disclaimer.  
  
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CHAPTER THREE  
  
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Dawn knew Andrew was kind of lame, but he was the only one of the group who didn't act like they were too old, sad and/or (ew) mature to have a good time. Except Faith, but her good times were usually a little *too* mature. Plus, being under 21 really keeps you out of everywhere cool.   
  
So while everybody else was doing work-related activities – locating Slayers, finding occult books on e-Bay, turning the ballroom into a training room – Dawn and Andrew would take the crappiest of the used cars that the Council's money had purchased and go down to Bardstown Road to go to thrift stores or Ear X-Tacy, the independent music store, or to Baxter to see that "Whale Rider" movie. Or the comic book store, if Andrew whined about it too much.   
  
It was actually turning into a pretty decent summer. Maybe Dawn's best yet, though that wasn't really much of a contest. I mean, hmm, out of the two summers that she'd actually existed, which one sucked the worst? She'd spent the first one either crying 'cause her mom and sister had both just died or else hanging out with an angry and depressed vampire, and sometimes both at once. The second summer had been better, but she was grounded for June and half of July over the shoplifting thing, and for the rest of the summer Buffy was obsessed with taking her out to the graveyard to "train" her, which mostly meant "give her tedious lectures on 'power' and how slaying was 'real'". Yeah, party on, Wayne.   
  
But this summer, she was thoroughly enjoying her freedom, her new learner's permit (thanks for the training in the Kroger parking lot, Giles!), and, well, Andrew. Sort of. If she saw X2 one more time she was going to scream, but he was up for anything and he appreciated the fun value of going to Walgreen's and trying on all the sunglasses (especially the kid ones - he got Spiderman; she got Blue's Clues). You had to value that in a person.   
  
This meant she didn't mind the hand-holding incident. It was okay, actually.  
  
It happened when they were pranking Papa John, the owner of the pizza chain, whom they'd just found out lived down the street from them. It was a pretty lame prank – they just went up to his closed gate, pressed the talk button and tried to order a pizza, which probably happened to the guy all the time – but it seemed funny when they were talking about it, so what the heck. Someone started walking out towards the gate though, so they panicked and started to run away, laughing uncontrollably. Andrew grabbed Dawn's hand as they booked it down the street and around the corner for a good ways before they slowed to a walk, breathing hard and giggling. They laughed about it for awhile before deciding that maybe they'd walk over to the Sav-a-Step and get Blow Pops to turn their lips blue to cap off the afternoon. The thing was, they hadn't let go of each other's hands once the fake danger had passed, and they kept holding them the whole way over to the convenience store.   
  
Andrew's hand was kind of sweaty, but it wasn't bad to be holding a boy's hand and walking down the road on a summer afternoon. Kind of normal, actually. Kind of nice. When they walked back, they were sucking on the Blow Pops and occasionally showing each other their tongues to ask how blue they were yet.   
  
This of course was what led up to the other incident. Which was Dawn's fault. And which wasn't that bad, either.  
  
"So is my tongue blue yet?" Andrew asked, opening his mouth wide. Dawn stopped walking to look.  
  
"I can't quite see...," she said, getting closer and pretending to peer at it. Then, with his mouth all close and an unnatural shade of bluey-purple... well. She leaned in and kissed him.   
  
He was surprised, but after a second kissed back. It was okay. Sugary. Maybe every kiss would be better if it tasted like artificial blue raspberry.   
  
After a minute they stopped kissing and starting walking down the road again. Andrew was bright red, but after a second took her hand as they walked. His was shaking a little bit.   
  
"So... um... are you, like, my girlfriend now?" he asked finally. His voice was all squeaky on the first part.   
  
"I guess," said Dawn. "If you want."  
  
"Yeah, okay," he said.   
  
Which led to a week of making out in the back row of most of the Tinseltown cineplex's theaters. In the back row the armrests folded up, of course. So they paid Buffy's good money to not watch "2 Fast 2 Furious", "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle", "Dumb and Dumberer", "Terminator 3", and "The Matrix Reloaded". It's not like you really need to watch sequels to get the plot, anyway. When Buffy would ask how the movie was, they'd just be like, "The car chase sequences were awesome! Jim Carrey was hilarious! Charlie's Angels was a delightful romp!" or whatever and she wouldn't suspect a thing.   
  
They broke up two weeks later, on a Tuesday afternoon.  
  
"Andrew! I swear, if you mention Rogue one more time, I am breaking up with you! Is that what you want?"  
  
"No, ma'am," he said sheepishly, and was quiet for about 30 seconds.  
  
"But if you'd just *read* the comic book, you'd..."  
  
"That's it! We are *so* broken up." Dawn stalked off.  
  
They got back together on Thursday when he brought her a bouquet of lollipops. She needed a licensed driver to go to the mall anyway.   
  
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TBC  
  
Note: All those places really exist in Louisville, except that the Sav-a-Step I'm thinking of closed back when I was in high school. Oh well. Also, John Schnotter (aka Papa John) really does live right down the street from the big white house on the hill that I'm pretending the Council owns. Weird, huh? 


	4. Book Me

Getting Off The Griefmobile  
  
By Annakovsky  
  
See part 1 for all relevant info and disclaimer.  
  
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CHAPTER FOUR  
  
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Faith was finding that she sort of liked spending time in the library. She liked the quiet. Ironic since most of her life pre-prison had been spent avoiding quiet. Sure, she still went out to clubs and stuff at night, dancing to pulsing music so loud you felt it in your gut and sometimes afterwards a one night stand, but in the afternoons, when the library was cool and hushed and nobody much was around, she liked being there.  
  
Besides, she felt weird hanging around the Scoobs. They were doing this bonding thing, and it wasn't about her, which was cool and all, but, well, there weren't a lot of other people to hang out with. She and Buffy trained together, and everyone was nice and everything, but she wasn't one of them and she knew it. And it's not like she was going to go hang out with Dawn and Andrew instead. So she went to the library.  
  
Giles was usually there too, but he was pretty quiet and unobtrusive. Faith hadn't thought about it before, but in some ways Giles was as much of an outsider to the group as she was. Of course he'd been there since the beginning, but he was the adult, not one of the gang. Who did he hang out with when he didn't want to play Dad?  
  
One day she decided to just ask him if he minded being the only real grownup. He looked taken aback. "Well... that may have contributed to my moving back to England, honestly. But I don't mind at the moment. And soon I imagine there will be more adults here – I've been contacting the few scattered Watchers who are left around the world, and many will be here in September as we regroup."  
  
"Oh. That's cool. So what about girlfriends?" He looked surprised again, but a little amused.  
  
"I do all right," he said, smiling slightly as he put a book back on the shelf.  
  
"Naw, I mean, you're decent looking, for an old guy. You should be doing more than all right."  
  
"Well, thank you," he said dryly. "I'll put that in my personal ad. 'Decent looking, for an old guy.'"  
  
"It sounded better in my head," she said, shaking her head at herself. "I suck at compliments. Sorry about the damning with faint praise thing." He raised an eyebrow. She smiled sheepishly. "Did some reading in the joint. She's not as dumb as she looks, believe it or not."  
  
"I always thought you were quite intelligent, actually. Impulsive, but intelligent."  
  
"Quit lying." He just smiled at her.  
  
"So how are you, Faith? I've noticed that you haven't been spending much time with the others."  
  
"They... well, Buffy and Xander and Willow, they're, you know... bonding. Or whatever. I don't want to get in the way."  
  
"Really."  
  
"Well... and Buffy doesn't much like me... taking her stuff. Or making friends with her friends. You know. And I was kind of crappy to her like that, with Angel and, uh, Riley. So I figure I should just, you know, stay out of their way for awhile. That's all."  
  
"Hmm."  
  
"I probably shouldn't be getting too cozy with you either, come to think of it." She shrugged, wryly. "Atoning for past sins kind of bites."  
  
"I wouldn't worry about me," Giles said. "I wouldn't worry about any of it, actually. It's kind of you to think of, but you don't have to avoid everyone to atone." Then he tried to suppress a smile. "So what about Andrew and Dawn? There's no good reason to avoid them." Faith snorted.  
  
"You serious?"  
  
"No," he said, out and out smiling now. She grinned back and gave a shudder.  
  
"All that puppy love gives me the willies."  
  
"Not fond memories of your own first love?"  
  
"Never been in love," she said lightly. "Don't know if I believe in it." Giles looked at her. She was carefully studying the titles of the books on the shelf nearest her.  
  
"Well, you're young yet," he said mildly, putting another book back on the shelf.  
  
"Hey, I've been around the block a few times, and I don't see that getting wrinkly means that people start caring about anything more than themselves, you know?" She meant to sound cool and detached, but could hear herself getting a little defensive towards the end and hated it.  
  
"Faith. It wasn't a criticism."  
  
"Yeah, I... yeah. Sorry," she said. She started to get up.  
  
"Besides," he said, holding her in place with a look. "It seems to me that *you*, at least, care about more than yourself."  
  
"Well, that's.. optimistic."  
  
"Deny it all you like. But I've seen you. And I know it takes a great deal of courage to care about the world when it doesn't seem to care about you."  
  
She couldn't think of anything to say. He shelved his last book and moved to walk past her to the door, putting his left hand on her right shoulder as he passed.  
  
His hand felt like the Mayor's had, strong and loving and safe – the only two hands that had ever felt like that. But she had the feeling that Giles wouldn't follow it up by getting her to kill somebody so he could turn into a giant snake.  
  
That was different.  
  
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TBC... 


	5. The Queen of Dairy

Getting Off The Griefmobile  
  
By Annakovsky  
  
See part 1 for all relevant info and disclaimer.  
  
***********  
  
CHAPTER FIVE  
  
***********  
  
"I can't believe Dawn thinks I don't know about her and Andrew," Buffy complained to Willow and Xander at Dairy Queen one afternoon. They were all sitting outside with their blizzards, sun glaring off the parking lot. "It's not like I'm some kind of mentally impaired, short-bus riding blind person, you know. I mean, 'Charlie's Angels was a delightful romp?' Squirrels could come up with a more believable line than that."  
  
"Oh, c'mon, Buffy, you remember being a teenager. All adults were morons," said Willow.  
  
"All adults *are* morons," said Faith, returning from the bathroom and straddling the picnic table bench as Buffy handed her back her ice cream. "I can feel my brain rotting away more every year."  
  
Giles had mentioned to Buffy that maybe she should invite Faith to do things with them once in awhile, saying something about Faith seeming a little left out. Buffy was surprised and thought Giles was completely clueless, since she was pretty sure Faith wasn't hanging out with them because she thought they were lame and un-fun. But Buffy dutifully invited her and was shocked when Faith seemed glad to come along. Score one for the clueless British man. And it actually turned out to be kind of cool. She... fit with them, somehow. And it seemed like she was really trying. Either Faith had become way more responsible or Buffy had loosened up a lot, 'cause it wasn't all Goofus and Gallant anymore.   
  
"Well, okay, so maybe we're getting towards dumb adulthood, but I'm not Dawn's mom, I'm her cool older sister! Shouldn't she be, like, confiding in me? Also, does this mean that my mom knew that I wasn't really going to the library on Friday nights?"  
  
"But, um, Buffy?" said Willow. "We *were* going to the library on Friday nights. Remember?"  
  
"Oh my God, I had the lamest adolescence ever."   
  
"Least you didn't spend what would have been your senior year in jail," Faith joked, wiggling her eyebrows and taking a big bite of her ice-cream.  
  
"It was actually touch and go on that at one point," said Buffy. "Funny story. But yeah, okay, I guess we were not your average teens. But even so, we weren't dating, like, the biggest freaks in school..."  
  
"Buffy, we *were* the biggest freaks in school," interrupted Willow.  
  
"Well, okay, yes, but at least we had the sense to not date ex-arch-villains who'd tried to kill... and that's not really working either, so I'm just going to stop this sentence right now and move on to something else. So, how 'bout this heat, huh?"  
  
"In your defense, I just have to say that at least Angel and Spike were cool," said Xander. They all stared at him. "What? They were. In an annoying, showing-me-up kind of way. So Buff, do you want me to give Andrew the "I have a .45 and a shovel; I doubt anyone will miss you" talk about breaking Dawn's heart?"  
  
"Sounds good to me. Though I think Dawn's more likely to break his. Have you seen them? She's all, 'Andrew, get me a Diet Coke.' 'Andrew, we're going to the mall now, put the action figure down.' 'Andrew, if you're done with my laundry, I'm really in the mood for chocolate chip cookies, made from scratch.' And he's like, 'Sure, Dawn, I just found a great new recipe, so I'll get started on that as soon as I finish ironing your underwear.'"  
  
"That's my girl," Xander said proudly.  
  
"It's ridiculous. But anyway. Enough about my lame baby sister. What do you guys think about," Buffy's eyes suddenly widened as she stared over Willow's head, "that enormous demon coming out of the trees at that end of the parking lot?"  
  
Faith turned her head casually. "Well, I gotta give it points for the scales, but the horns are very 1998." She and Buffy were up and moving before she finished the sentence, pulling weapons out of their purses (both had stakes, but Faith bypassed hers to pull out a knife) and heading smoothly towards their opponent. Xander and Willow turned to watch, and in tandem, each thoughtfully took another bite of his or her ice cream.  
  
The double-team was quick and effective. When the demon lashed out an arm at Faith, she ducked under and plunged her knife into its gut. It made a little mewling noise of anger and this time smacked Faith hard with the back of its scaly hand, knocking her flat. In the meantime, Buffy had leaped onto its back and was holding on for dear life as it frantically grabbed at her, It had nearly pulled her free before Faith was back up and delivering a high kick to its chest. It staggered backwards, now focusing on Faith, who tossed Buffy her knife. Buffy caught it and slit the demon's throat in one smooth motion, jumping free at the same moment so she wouldn't get blood on her new shirt.   
  
"You guys know what this means, right?" Buffy asked, looking disgustedly at her bloody hands and then taking one of the napkins Willow mutely held out.  
  
"The sacred parking lot of Dairy Queen has been desecrated?"  
  
"Yes, but also? Summer's over."  
  
"Aw, man. It's barely August."  
  
"And somehow the demons are already coming out to play. Time to call in Giles Exposition and get back to work." They all sighed.  
  
"You know what I hate most about demons?" Faith asked as the four of them dragged the corpse back into the little wooded area behind the Dairy Queen.  
  
"Body detail?" asked Xander.  
  
"Body detail."   
  
*****************************************  
  
TBC... 


	6. In Which a Plot Emerges

Getting Off The Griefmobile  
  
By Annakovsky  
  
See part 1 for all relevant info and disclaimer.  
  
***********  
  
CHAPTER SIX  
  
***********  
  
"Blue scales all over its body, horns, humanoid, about 7 feet tall..." Buffy recounted as all seven of them gathered in the library.  
  
"Came staggering out of the woods like it didn't know where it was or something," said Faith. "And not the toughest sucker I've ever fought, either. Hell, I've rassled an alligator tougher than that guy."   
  
"Right, the alligator," Buffy said unenthusiastically. "So Giles, any leads on our blue and scaly wuss-demon?" Giles was flipping through one of the books, before setting it down and getting out the next in the series.   
  
"I believe..." he said, and stopped on one page towards the middle. "Did it look like this?" They all leaned in to peer at it.  
  
"Yup," said Xander. Willow nodded.  
  
"Pretty much exactly," she said. They all looked at them. "Oh, we had great seats right in the front row! Surround sound and everything!"  
  
"It's a demon native to the Southeastern United States, primarily found in Kentucky and Tennessee," said Giles. "One of the family of grass demons, who live underground in caves and lay their eggs in grassy areas."  
  
"So, um, it's a blue grass demon?" asked Xander.   
  
"I'm afraid so," said Giles. "It's strange that it would be wandering out this close to civilization, especially during the day. These demons are for the most part peaceful, and stay away from populated areas. The only time sightings have been made in urban areas was in the early 1970s, when the Hellmouth in Nashville was particularly active."  
  
"So... you're saying that the only time these guys wander around by Dairy Queens is when Hellmouths are going crazy," Faith said. Giles nodded.   
  
"They seem to become agitated when great evil is abroad, I'm sorry to say."   
  
Buffy groaned. "Don't tell me the blue grass demon is a sign of impending apocalypse, 'cause it's totally the wrong time of year for that."  
  
"Is it the First?" Willow asked tentatively. Five heads swung to look at her, eyes wide, almost angry in their surprise. Giles was still looking at the book, head down.   
  
"Willow! We just... how can you even... that's ridiculous! We won, remember?" Buffy was almost unable to form a coherent thought through the panic suddenly rushing her. Not again, please God, not again, we beat it, we had to have beat it, please God, not again, I can't do it again, I can't, I can't.... "Giles, tell her!"   
  
"I don't... know anything for sure," he said. He finally looked up and rubbed a hand over his face. "But it appears that the First became active last year in the first place because of a cosmic imbalance caused by your resurrection. Yes, we defeated its army. But... we also created an enormous number of new Slayers."  
  
"Talk about your imbalance," said Willow softly. "I wondered."  
  
"Yes," said Giles simply.   
  
"Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod," Andrew started saying over and over again, starting to hyperventilate.   
  
"We don't know anything for sure," said Giles. "So let's not panic." Dawn hit Andrew on the arm.   
  
"Ow," he said, but he took a deep breath and stopped chanting.   
  
"Giles," said Buffy. "We're the Slayers. We slay things. An army of uber-vamps we can do, but cosmic evils that you can't slay, and that just get more powerful when you take drastic action to stop them? We can't. We just can't." She stopped talking before she turned into a chanting mess like Andrew.   
  
"Yeah," said Dawn. "Besides, every time we make a move to beat the First, it'll just come back stronger again 'cause we've upset the cosmic balance. That means there is no way for good to win unless we all die and so do all the new Slayers. And I for one am just not that excited about that option."  
  
"I know," Giles said. "So if it is the First... well, this time we'll appeal to higher powers."  
  
"What, like a First Good or something?" said Faith.  
  
"Yes."  
  
"You want us to appeal to God?" asked Willow. "Can we do that?"   
  
"The First Good isn't God. If there is a God, it's above the First Good and First Evil. They're the balancers, not the ones in charge. As far as I understand it, anyway," said Giles. "If we want balance to be restored and the First to be stopped, we need to go directly to the Powers That Be."  
  
"Do they have a suggestion box anywhere nearby? Because I could write them a killer note. Let's see... 'Dear Powers That Suck, Could you do something about your boy the First? It's annoying us again. Thanks. Love, the Scooby Gang, Fighters of Evil since 1997.'" Xander was in fine form.   
  
"If it is the First. Which is the first thing we need to find out," said Buffy. She sighed internally. General Buffy, reporting for duty.   
  
"Hey, don't worry, B," said Faith. "I don't think there's anything this team can't handle." Nobody looked like they really believed her, but Buffy appreciated the effort and gave her a wan smile.   
  
The one thing Buffy knew was that she wasn't losing anybody else. As far as Evil was concerned, the kitchen was closed and there would be no more Scooby snacks. Ever.   
  
********************  
  
TBC... 


	7. Purplesaurus Xander

Getting Off The Griefmobile  
  
By Annakovsky  
  
See part 1 for all relevant info and disclaimer.  
  
***********  
  
CHAPTER SEVEN  
  
***********  
  
Willow had her new laptop out at the kitchen table, having seriously upped the pace on the spell she'd been working on for the past few weeks. It was a variation on the Potential Identifying spell she'd used earlier in the year to find Amanda. She'd been working on adapting it to identify Slayers instead of Potentials, and also on making it more practical for finding Slayers scattered throughout the world. Ideally, when it was finished, the spell would be keyed into the laptop and produce a spreadsheet of names, ages, phone numbers, and addresses. Ideally. So far nothing, but she was sure if she worked on it harder, she'd get it soon. And if the First really was getting active again, the first thing it would probably do would be try to kill the new Slayers, so finding them all and readying them all to protect themselves was very important. Buffy had already called all the ones they'd known from Sunnydale.   
  
She sighed and tried to focus. Thinking about what might happen kept distracting her and she needed to concentrate. Also, thinking about what had happened.  
  
It still just blew her away that Sunnydale was gone. It was weird how much it made her feel like she was a girl without a past, like everything before last May had just been wiped out. It was weird how adrift it made her feel.   
  
She found herself wanting to be around Xander all the time, like the fact that he remembered all the same stuff she did made it real, made *her* real. There was no one else who remembered the creek where they used to catch tadpoles, or how there was one tree in her yard that was perfect for climbing. No one else remembered that Travis Bernard had been the biggest bully of junior high (until he, like many of their classmates over the years, had mysteriously disappeared in 8th grade), and remembered that one time in elementary school that Cordelia had tripped during gym class and fallen on her face in front of everybody. No one else had had dinner at her house with her family (back when her parents used to make an effort), and no one else remembered how dorky she had looked when she had braces and that horrible flippy haircut.   
  
Her parents had made it out of Sunnydale in the mass exodus, and so had his, but it's not like either set were treasuring the memories of Willow and Xander's lives, willing to talk over the geography of the playground with them. The two of them had each other, and that was it. And Buffy, and Giles, and Faith, too, but their memories didn't date back to when Xander used to steal Willow's Barbies and she would tickle him 'til he cried. Xander was Sunnydale to her now, was the past. Was the anchor to everything that had happened before.   
  
That was sort of part of the reason she had broken up with Kennedy. Most of the reason was that Kennedy was on the bossy side and totally rebound girl and Willow just didn't care that much, but also... it was just weird to have this person who thought they were everything to you, when they didn't even know you before you were gay, or before you had killed people, or before your girlfriend had died. Kennedy seemed to think Willow was this cool, lesbian witch, and while that was sort of gratifying, Willow just didn't feel like that was really her. She still felt like nerdy, softer-side-of-Sears Willow on the inside, and for Kennedy not to have known that Willow just felt like Kennedy didn't really know her at all.   
  
Willow knew this was sort of silly, because obviously she'd only have one friend and would be doomed to a life of celibacy if she required everyone to have known her her whole life, but at this point, it mattered to her. And Xander was what she needed. It was almost like it was back sophomore year of high school, when she had that huge crush on him and her whole world revolved around what Xander was doing and feeling. Except without the whole crush part and the desperate disappointment when he made it obvious he just thought of her as a friend.   
  
But spell, spell, what did she need for this spell? She rubbed her head. Okay, if she replaced the chrysalises, or whatever the plural was, with full-grown butterflies, and then changed some of the wording... okay. She started typing away.   
  
Xander came in and started opening cupboards.  
  
"How's the spell coming?" he asked, pulling out a pitcher.  
  
"I'll get it eventually."  
  
"Of course you will," he said, smiling at her. "I'm making Kool-Aid, you want any?"  
  
"What kind, Purplesaurus Rex?"  
  
"But of course."  
  
"Then absolutely. You remember that time that we brought some up to your room and you spilled the whole container on the carpet by your bed?"  
  
"Yeah, and so we rearranged all the furniture to cover it? That stain's still there, it...." He stopped. They both pictured the floor of Xander's childhood bedroom, with its beige carpet and round purple stain, splintering into floorboards with a rush of dust and debris, his old toys and shelves of childhood memories smashing together and collapsing, along with the rest of his house and neighborhood, into the crater. Xander started mixing the Kool-Aid with a fierce energy, and picked the pitcher up as he moved to the fridge to get ice, still mixing.   
  
At that moment, Dawn and Andrew came tearing through the kitchen towards the outside door, Xander directly in their path. Xander saw them at the last minute and tried desperately to move the Kool-Aid out of their way, but Andrew, in trying to dodge around him, managed to knock the pitcher so that almost all the Purplesaurus Rex went down Xander's front.   
  
"Sorry!" Andrew called as Dawn pulled him out the door. "The movie starts in, like, 2 minutes!" He waved apologetically and disappeared as Xander looked down at his now completely purple shirt front.  
  
"Are you okay?" Willow asked, trying not to laugh. She got up and grabbed a handful of paper towels and wet a few of them under the tap. Xander disgustedly tried to pull his shirt away from his body.  
  
"I had forgotten how sticky Kool-Aid is," he said. He looked down again before just pulling his shirt off over his head and using the back of the shirt, which had mostly missed the Kool-Aid flood, to wipe uselessly at the sticky purple traces all over his upper body. "Have I mentioned that I hate Andrew?" he joked, wiping at his left arm.  
  
Willow handed him some of the paper towels, and found herself looking at his chest and arms. Xander had been working out, she noticed vaguely. It looked... hmm. Willow was suddenly very aware of Xander as male. And not in a bad way. She noticed a trail of hair beginning around his belly button and disappearing into the waistband of his jeans, and felt... whoa! Hey! Lesbian! What do you think you're doing, brain?   
  
"I think I better just go shower," Xander said.  
  
"Huh? Yes! Shower! Good. Okay, you go shower. I'm gonna get back to this spell because wow, it's pretty important and I think I'm on the verge of cracking it, and... yeah," she finished lamely, realizing she was babbling and desperately trying to stop.   
  
"Okay, then," Xander said, looking at her strangely. "Will, how much caffeine did you have today?"  
  
"Huh? Oh, way too much, you have no idea. I better lay off that now." He grinned at her and shook his head affectionately as he headed upstairs.   
  
She went back over to the laptop and rested her head on her left hand for a minute. Spell, think about the spell. What do you need to do? After a few seconds she began to type again, determinedly not thinking about Xander in the shower. At all.   
  
**************  
  
TBC... 


	8. Rosy Fingered and Red Cheeked Dawn

Getting Off The Griefmobile  
  
By Annakovsky  
  
See part 1 for all relevant info and disclaimer.  
  
***********  
  
CHAPTER EIGHT  
  
***********  
  
Andrew couldn't believe he had a girlfriend. An actual, living, breathing, non-magically-controlled girlfriend. A girl, a pretty hot girl, *liked* him. This was seriously the best summer ever. Holding hands with Dawn under the dinner table, surrounded by Buffy and all her friends, actually a part of the group, the Slayer's inner circle... dating the Slayer's younger sister. The beautiful, oft-neglected younger sister whose raven-dark hair shone in the sunlight. A true fighter for good who deigned to bestow her glances upon him, one who had gone astray but now sought to redeem himself in the battle against evil.  
  
Holy cow, he felt pretty sure he was just going to explode with happiness at any second and they'd spend the next month cleaning pieces of him off the walls.  
  
"Andrew, what's with the sighing? Because it is seriously annoying," Buffy said. Dawn immediately let go of his hand and stomped on his foot. Because their love was a secret... for now.  
  
"Ow!" he said, but Dawn glared at him and he turned it into a fake cough instead. He hadn't even noticed that he'd been sighing, that's what being this happy will do to you. "Um, nothing," he said. "Sorry." Buffy gave Dawn a withering look.  
  
"Can't you keep your boyfriend under control?" she asked her. Dawn actually choked on her food and started coughing.  
  
"My what?" she finally managed to get out.  
  
"You heard me," said Buffy. Andrew felt a little panicky and looked around to see how everyone else was taking the news. No one looked surprised, though. Most of them looked very, very amused. Giles was cleaning his glasses intently, unsuccessfully suppressing a smile.  
  
"Oh, he's not... we're not..." Dawn stammered. Buffy raised an eyebrow at her. Dawn swiveled her head to glare at Andrew. "Andrew, you *told* her?!? You *promised*..."  
  
"No, no, no, I didn't say anything, I swear!" Andrew said.  
  
"Dawn, honestly," said Buffy. "I figured it out all on my own, as I do, in fact, have half a brain. It's no big deal. Pass the potatoes, will you?"  
  
Dawn, looking mortified, did so.  
  
"Buffy," started Andrew. "I just have to say that I appreciate your confidence in us and want to assure you that my intentions are..."  
  
"Andrew!" Dawn almost shrieked, turning beet red. "Please, I beg of you, stop talking."  
  
"Okay, honey, I just wanted..." he trailed off when Dawn groaned in embarrassment (sometime around the word "honey") and leaned her head on her hand so that no one could see her face. "... never mind," Andrew finished. "So, um, Buffy, what's the plan for dealing with the First?"  
  
Buffy grinned, but had mercy on her sister and let Andrew change the subject. "Well, like I told you guys, I talked to Angel and his, um, law firm? Or something like that, I didn't quite follow it – anyway, they're working on getting us in touch with someone who can get us in touch with the Powers That Be. And while we're waiting on that, all the Slayers we know of are on high alert and as soon as Willow gets her spell done we'll send a couple of people out to tell them all that they're Slayers and that they need to be careful, and that we'll be sending them Watchers soon. Maybe regional Watchers since there's a little bit of a shortage, but Watchers, anyway."  
  
"So who's going to go out as the Slayer-finder-and-teller?" Willow asked.  
  
"I don't know," said Buffy. "I kind of don't feel like I can spare any of you."  
  
"Hey, Dawn and I could do it," suggested Andrew. "The two of us, traveling around the world...."  
  
"Sure," Buffy laughed. She looked at him. "Oh, you were serious?" She laughed again. "Yeah, okay, Andrew, keep dreaming."  
  
"What about Giles? He has a lot of experience telling Potentials about their calling," said Xander. "How exactly do you do it, anyway?" Giles had his mouth full and went to swallow and answer, but Buffy jumped in.  
  
"Well, in my experience you act really creepy and then slam a big book with "Vampyr" – spelled wrong – on the cover. It's really a great way to ease your new Slayer into it." She looked at Giles, teasing. He cleared his throat.  
  
"Yes... well. I was young and, er, enthusiastic. Besides, you already knew about your destiny and all that." She gave him a look. "I'm willing to admit it may have been a bit heavy-handed," he said. "You'll be pleased to know I'm much more tactful these days."  
  
"Well, that's a relief," said Buffy. "Okay, so Giles will do the informing-new-Slayers-thing. I think he should have a partner, though."  
  
"Ooh, and maybe they can hand out copies of the Watchtower, too," said Dawn sarcastically. She was still smarting from all the earlier perceived humiliation.  
  
"No, partnering is a good idea," said Willow. "If Giles were on his own and the First got to him... it's too dangerous, even with most of the Harbingers and uber-vamps out of the picture at the moment. He needs someone to watch his back. Someone who's a good fighter. And I think maybe the new Slayers would be reassured if they could talk to someone who's been a Slayer for awhile, knows how to handle it." She looked meaningfully at Faith. Faith's eyes widened.  
  
"Uh, did you say 'knows how to handle it'? 'Cause I think with me, past events may not bear that out. Not that I don't appreciate the thought and all."  
  
"Hey, I think that's a great idea, Willow," said Buffy. "Having a Watcher/Slayer combo would be a much easier way to break the news. If you're willing to do it, Faith. But I for one think you'd do a really good job."   
  
"I..." Faith looked around the table before shrugging. "Hey, whatever. If you guys want me to, I'm in, but don't say I didn't warn you."  
  
"You'll be great," Buffy said sincerely. Faith shrugged, looking a bit embarrassed. All of a sudden she got very busy cutting up her pork chop. "Well, that's good, then," said Buffy. "Then me, Willow, Xander and the lovebirds will hold down the fort and do whatever we can when we get this meeting or whatever set up. And we'll deal with any Hellmouth issues as they come up." Dawn was brick red again over the lovebirds comment.   
  
"May I be excused?" she asked. "I forgot that I have to go crawl into a hole and die."  
  
"Oh, get over it," said Buffy. "If you can handle dating him, I think you can handle the teasing. So is everybody okay with the plan, inadequate as it is?" Everyone nodded.  
  
"Thanks for asking," said Xander quietly, but sincerely. Buffy gave him an apologetic smile.   
  
"That's the way it should always be. You're my council of war, not the troops." They all smiled but didn't really look at each other. Feelings from the past year were still a little too raw, despite how far they'd come.  
  
"So what's my job in the council of war?" asked Andrew, breaking the slightly awkward silence. "Can I be the guy in charge of deploying our nuclear armaments?" They all laughed a little.  
  
"Andrew, as soon as we get some nuclear armaments, you're our guy," said Buffy. "I think I can safely promise that."  
  
"Cool," said Andrew.  
  
**  
  
Willow got the spell to work that night after dinner. She yelled triumphantly and they all came running.   
  
"You guys, I got it! I actually got it!" she said, very excited. A long spreadsheet was open on her laptop, a perfect list of names and addresses.  
  
"Willow, you're a genius!" Xander said, hugging her. She was a little red and flustered right after the hug, but Andrew figured that was from being excited over getting the spell right. Dawn scrolled down to the bottom of the list. It ended with #438 – Zimmerman, Jessica, age 16, of Portland, Oregon. Willow had of course made her spell alphabetize.  
  
"So this means Giles and I head out soon, huh?" said Faith. "Where are we going?" She started scrolling through the list. "I've never heard of some of these places. Where the hell's Burkina Faso?"  
  
"West Africa," said Willow.  
  
"Oh," she said, still scrolling. She began to read them out loud. "China, India, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, France, Afghanistan... would this be a bad time to mention I've never actually been out of the country before?"  
  
"Ah, other countries are overrated anyway," said Xander.   
  
"Where have *you* ever been?" asked Buffy, surprised. She thought she, Xander, and Willow had all been stuck in America guarding the Hellmouth forever, except for Willow's evil-rehab trip to England.   
  
"Oh, you know... Mexico," he said. "Once. But it's way overrated."  
  
"Guess I'll get to see for myself," said Faith. "Seven new Slayers there. Ninety in China. Hope your Chinese has gotten better, Giles."  
  
"So do I," he said. "So do I."  
  
***********************  
  
TBC...  
  
***********************  
  
Notes: Apparently more than 12 million people live in Burkina Faso, but I swear I'd never heard of it before. 12 million is enough to get it a Slayer, though. I actually went through the estimated population of every country, found out what percentage of world population was in each, and then distributed the 438 Slayers proportionally. Really. I have a whole spreadsheet on it now. It's ironic that I'm being this precise, since 438 is a number I just picked at random, but still. (If you're interested, the top 3 countries are China, with 90 Slayers, India, with 73, followed by the US, in third place, with a mere 20. In the rest of the English speaking world, Canada has 2, the United Kingdom 4, and Australia just 1. More than half the Slayers (263, to be exact) live in Asia. Actually, more than that, since I counted Russia with Europe even though most of it's in Asia. Oh, and if you're REALLY interested in all this, I'll be happy to email you the spreadsheet.) I have no idea if any of this will ever appear in the story, but hey, there it is.  
  
This is how much I care about you, the reader. Also, I seem to get very excited when things can involve spreadsheets and graphs. I'm not quite sure why.  
  
Of course, this is all assuming that the number of Slayers in each country is proportional to the number of people in the country. This assumption is in blatant disregard of canon, since all but one of the Potentials shown onscreen in Season 7 were from the English speaking world. But I'm gonna fanwank that this was because the Scoobs were better able to rescue those Potentials who were English speakers.   
  
Also, the show is hopelessly Amero-euro-centric. Ha! Take that Joss! Wait, no, don't sue... damn. 


	9. Killing Time

Getting Off The Griefmobile  
  
By Annakovsky  
  
See part 1 for all relevant info and disclaimer.  
  
***********  
  
CHAPTER NINE  
  
***********  
  
Faith soon found that if you've told one girl that it's her destiny to slay vampires and protect the world from evil, you've told them all. The first time was sort of interesting, the second time a little less so, and by the third she had to hold herself back from rolling her eyes at the "But there's no such thing as vampires!" and the "But I can't be chosen! I'm normal, I swear!" and blah dee blah blah. It was a good thing Giles was there and had inhuman patience, or else the sessions would be "Vampires are real, you slay them, here's a stake, have fun, later!"  
  
Even so, she and Giles started making bets to liven things up.   
  
"Okay," she said as they sat in the driveway of yet another suburban home. (They were doing North America first.) "Five dollars. I'm thinking she'll say, 'You're both crazy,' 'Get out of my house!' and 'But I can't be a vampire slayer.' In that order."  
  
"That's just like shooting fish in a barrel! Put some sport into it, Faith." She grinned.  
  
"Okay, then. Blond, brunette or redhead?"  
  
"Blond," they said together. Slayers, at least the white ones, seemed to be disproportionately blond.   
  
"Okay, um... already seen vampires and in the process of repressing, or not?" Faith said. She'd finally stumped him.   
  
"Hmmm. I'll say not. For five dollars," Giles said after thinking it over.   
  
"You're on." They got out of the car. "You know, this'd be easier if we still had a pet vamp to haul around. Just get Spike to give her the fang face and cut out the whole first section of the convincing."  
  
"But then there'd be the tedious explanation of why you aren't supposed to kill this particular vampire, and moral ambiguity and souls and what all else, and in the end you just have a much more confused new Slayer thinking that vampires are noble, isolated creatures who belong in an Anne Rice novel."  
  
"In other words, chaos," said Faith.   
  
"Indeed," he said, knocking on the door. She leaned against the brick of the house, waiting for the girl to open the door, and yawned loudly. He rolled his eyes at her.  
  
**  
  
The sun had set by the time they emerged from the home of Allison Young, brand spanking new slayer, and Faith was five dollars richer. Turned out Ms. Young had encountered a vampire just two nights before, but managed to outrun it. Faith had given her a few lessons in martial arts, handed over a some stakes, and Giles had told her all the basic vampire slaying principles, as well as a little bit about the First. Then they hit the local graveyard and actually found a vamp for her to dust (away from a Hellmouth, there was no guarantee that you'd find one for the newbies to practice on). She did all right; a little clumsy, but hit the heart on her first try and was definitely moving more securely by the end of the fight.   
  
"Did you guys see that! He just turned to dust!" she gushed, eyes wide.   
  
"Yup," said Faith, smiling despite herself.  
  
"Good work," said Giles. "Very competent for your first attempt."  
  
"Wow, don't bowl her over with the enthusiasm there, Giles," teased Faith. He ignored her.   
  
"I think you'll do quite well on your own," he said. "Just remember to always stay on the alert, and we'll be in touch." He actually shook hands with her.  
  
"Thanks," Allison said. She looked at her watch. "Whoa! Curfew! I gotta run, but thanks, guys." She waved and took off running, clearly enjoying her new speed. "This is awesome!" she yelled back over her shoulder before she jumped the cemetery wall and disappeared. Faith and Giles grinned at each other, and began walking towards the car. Faith was enjoying the night air and thinking about the obvious delight on Allison's face as she had staked the vamp. She was enough lost in her thoughts that she didn't hear the gang of vampires until they were practically on top of her and Giles.   
  
The fight was a good one; standard, 'cause they were just vamps, but there were around six or seven of them which made it more of a challenge. For awhile after Faith's whole evil-is-rad phase, she was wary of her enjoyment of the slaying, felt like that had been what had pulled her down. She thought that maybe if she had been like Buffy, tried to not enjoy it so much, she'd be safer. From herself.   
  
But seeing all these new slayers, with their joy in their strength – not in the killing part, but in the movement, in the feeling of doing what you were made to do – had reminded her that it wasn't enjoying the slaying that was bad, it was what you did with the slaying.   
  
She should write inspirational posters, she really should.   
  
But she'd found the joy again. When she moved so fast the vamp could hardly see her, or delivered an awesome high kick, or grabbed one vamp and whirled him so that he slammed into another one... she loved it, loved the feel of her muscles stretching and moving and pulling to their limits, loved the complete absorption in the moment, the clarity of it, the spur of the moment creativity, seeing what was around and using it and running and jumping and hitting and kicking. Oh, it was good, and she loved the vamps and loved the cemetery and loved her body that was so strong and fought so well and loved Giles and loved the stake and the moon and she could fight and fight forever.   
  
That is, she loved it all until the very end. She staked a vamp and turned to find that there was only one left, which Giles was grappling with. She went over to help, and was just behind Giles' shoulder when he staked it himself. Then he whirled as he felt her right behind him, his stake up and ready and a look on his face like... well, it was almost scary, that look. Hell, it *was* scary. He looked like a killer, Giles did, and he only stopped the stake an inch away from her heart.  
  
"Whoa!" she said, disturbed but trying not to show it. "Hey, Mr. Overenthusiastic, you could hurt someone with that." Giles immediately looked apologetic and lowered the stake, but it didn't erase the memory of the look in his eyes a second before. Faith was almost shaking, which was stupid because she could have easily stopped it before he'd hurt her. It wasn't the whole I-could-have-died thing, it was just... Giles shouldn't look like that.   
  
"Sorry. I thought you were another vampire," he said. "Are you all right?"  
  
"Yeah, don't worry about it," she said after a second. She started walking to the car, and noticed that her hand actually *was* shaking now. When did she become the wuss of the century?  
  
She didn't say much to Giles that night, or the next day as they drove to their next target. She put her headphones on and looked out the windows, or pretended to be asleep. She just... didn't want to talk to him.   
  
When they got back into the car after a bathroom break in the middle of the afternoon, Giles just sat there, without starting the engine. Faith started getting out her CD player again, hoping to get the headphones on before he said anything.  
  
"Faith," he said. Damn it!   
  
"Yeah?" she said, going for casual and mostly succeeding. She started looking through her CD wallet for something new to listen to.  
  
"Is everything all right?"  
  
"Sure, everything's fine." She flipped a page.  
  
"Because you haven't said a word all day."  
  
"I'm just... you know, tired."   
  
"You've pretended to be asleep three times already, and normally you're talking like mad."   
  
Faith didn't know what to say, and closed her eyes for a second. She almost felt like she was going to start crying; there was that feeling of weight in her head, behind her eyes. She didn't even really know why.  
  
"I just... I thought you were safe," she said finally. There was a pause.  
  
"Oh," he said. He was staring straight out the windshield. He suddenly looked much older.  
  
"And you're not," she said. "Are you." A statement, not a question.  
  
"No. I suppose not." The silence in the car was like a physical thing, hovering over them.  
  
"It's stupid, I'm sorry, no big deal," Faith said finally. "I just, you know, got a little rattled, but really, I'm over it."  
  
"Please don't lie to me." Faith was taken up short and ducked her head.  
  
"Okay," she said. They sat in silence.  
  
"I'm sorry," he said finally. "I know what I was feeling last night at that moment and I understand how it could..." he waved a hand vaguely. The next sentence came out softer. "Sometimes it frightens me as well."  
  
"Did you use to be...?" Faith trailed off, not knowing quite what the adjective was that would complete that sentence. He kind of half nodded.  
  
"I used to be very... reckless. There was a group of us who would raise demons for the high, and other... well. It was a long time ago now. But it's still in me."  
  
"Have you killed anybody?" Faith asked in a small voice.  
  
"Yes," he said simply.  
  
"So have I," she said, and immediately felt stupid because of course he knew that. But he didn't look like he thought she was stupid. He looked at her compassionately.  
  
"I know," he said. After a moment he resumed staring out at the trees in front of the car. A man was walking his dog in the pet area of the rest stop, just to their left.  
  
"How do you keep... how do you live with it?" Faith asked. She still felt like she might cry and her head was aching. He turned to look at her, his eyes vulnerable and weary, and he sort of shrugged helplessly.  
  
"You just... do," he said. They looked at each other.  
  
"Yeah."  
  
After a long minute of silence, Giles started the car. The highway stretched for miles in front of them, long and straight and lonely.  
  
*******************  
  
TBC... 


	10. When People Start Getting Real

Getting Off The Griefmobile  
  
By Annakovsky  
  
See part 1 for all relevant info and disclaimer.  
  
***********  
  
CHAPTER TEN  
  
***********  
  
Buffy swung left and ducked under a low-hanging tree branch, having finally remembered that your average zombie has really poor eyesight. Because of the pre-zombification rotting, you know. As predicted, the zombie chasing her slammed right into the branch and was knocked flat. Two seconds later its head was celebrating its independence from its body and Buffy was looking around for where she'd dropped her duffel bag, so she could get out the old towel she used for cleaning her weapons. Giles had had a fit last time she'd left random goo on his best sword and even though he and Faith were somewhere in Central America at the moment, she still had the sneaking suspicion that somehow he'd *know* if she didn't wipe it off.   
  
She'd run into a whole gang of zombies that night in Cave Hill Cemetery. Did zombies come in gangs? A herd of zombies? A flock of zombies? A pride of zombies? She should ask Willow when she got home.   
  
Patrolling in Louisville had been really low-key until the last week - after the arrival of the blue grass demon things had kicked up a notch. Buffy was almost glad, though, because she had a serious case of pre-apocalypse twitchiness. She knew the First was amassing power, but there wasn't anything she could do – just wait on Angel and hope that they'd put a dent in the First's corporeal resources by getting rid of the uber-vamp army and the Harbingers and everything. So having something to do besides worrying was a definite plus. Bring on the zombies! Otherwise she'd sit at home and fidget, or yell at Dawn for stupid things.   
  
She finished cleaning the sword and headed for the exit, where she'd left the car. Cave Hill was her favorite cemetery, and whenever she left it she always noticed the private school across the street. Maybe Dawn should go there in the fall. The Council could afford tuition, right? She should start investigating what schools in the area were good - that'd be a useful and distracting kind of thing to do during the day.   
  
The house had felt pretty empty since Faith and Giles had been gone. All seven of them had turned into this tight group somehow over the course of the summer, and now there didn't seem to be enough people at the dinner table. Giles called every couple of days to let them know they were all right, though. They were picking up the pace, trying to talk to as many Slayers as possible every day so they could come back soon.   
  
Tonight the house would be even more empty, as Dawn had begged for permission for her and Andrew to drive up to Cincinnati to see an Avril Lavigne concert. Buffy had grudgingly told her she could go, mostly because she knew she'd never hear the end of it if she didn't. While they were gone, Buffy, Willow and Xander were going to take advantage of the quiet to have a movie night.   
  
"I thought Dawn and Andrew broke up last weekend and she was never speaking to him again," Willow had said when she heard about their concert trip. Buffy rolled her eyes.  
  
"They did. In Dawn time, 'never' is around a day and a half."  
  
"So if the kids are gone, we three can bond!" Xander said. "We can have a night of bondage fun." He snickered. To Buffy's surprise, Willow did too, though she stopped as soon as Buffy looked at her.   
  
So Willow and Xander were renting a movie while Buffy did her quick patrol, and then they were all going to watch it on the new big-screen TV and the really comfortable new couches when she got back. It was extremely cool to be kind of almost rich. They could rent DVDs, now!   
  
She drove down I-64 with the radio turned up loud, tapping on the steering wheel and going too fast. On her way to watch DVDs with her two best friends, fresh from slaughtering a gaggle of zombies, and "The Middle" playing on the radio. It was every girl's dream night, really.   
  
She cheerfully bounced into the house and yelled that she was back. "In the TV room," called Willow.  
  
"Hey, what're you watching?" she asked when she got up there.  
  
"Um... The Real World," said Xander. Buffy noticed that he and Willow were sitting at the far opposite ends of the couch, looking sort of awkward. Willow was kind of red in the face.   
  
"I haven't watched that in forever," Buffy said, plopping down on the couch. "Not since me and Riley used to watch it together. Or, well, not watch it... you know how it is." She laughed. Willow's eyes were huge.  
  
"Making out in front of the Real World?" Willow asked, and giggled nervously. "Wow, that's funny. I'd sure never do anything like that, no siree, nope."  
  
"What's with you?" Buffy asked. Willow turned redder, if that was possible.   
  
"Huh? Nothing. Do you guys want popcorn? I'm gonna go make popcorn." She hurried out of the room. Buffy looked at Xander, who had a weird look on his face.   
  
"Okay, so that was odd," she said. Xander nodded vaguely, playing with his shoelace.   
  
"So how was the slaying, Buffster?" he asked. "Get anything good?"  
  
"Bunch of zombies. No big deal. Don't know if anyone raised them specifically or if they're just getting stirred up because of general First Evil activity. I guess we'll figure it out if anything else happens. So what'd you guys rent?" She reached over to the coffee table, where a couple of Blockbuster DVD cases rested.   
  
"Willow insisted on 'The Sound of Music', and I got 'The Fast and the Furious' to assert my heterosexuality."  
  
"Cool. You know we're going to watch 'The Sound of Music', though, right?" Xander gave a beleaguered sigh.  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Good," Buffy laughed. She got up to put the movie in the DVD player. After she'd returned to the couch, Willow reappeared with popcorn, handing the bowl to Buffy and again sitting on the far side of the couch from Xander, without looking at him.   
  
The phone rang when Maria, flustered by her feelings for Captain Von Trapp, was packing her bags to leave. Buffy groaned and leaned over Xander to grab at the portable phone on the side table. Xander picked up the enormous remote control and paused the movie.   
  
"Angel? Hey!" Buffy said. She got up and took the phone out of the room to talk in private. A few minutes later she popped her head back in the room, holding a hand over the phone's mouthpiece.  
  
"Hey, you guys up for a mission? The guy Angel got in touch with won't talk to Slayers."  
  
"Why not?"  
  
"Demon. Has an aversion to being poked with pointy things."  
  
"Ah." Willow and Xander looked at each other.   
  
"Yeah, okay," said Xander, and shrugged. "We'll talk to the guy if you need us to."  
  
"Great," Buffy said, and popped her head back out again to find out the details.   
  
Willow glanced towards Xander, but whipped her head away again when she caught his eye.  
  
**************************  
  
TBC...  
  
NOTES: Cave Hill Cemetery is really beautiful – my grandmother's buried there. Though to my knowledge she is not now, nor has she ever been, part of a zombie gang.   
  
I feel a little bad for Buffy – everybody's making out except for her (and Faith and Giles, but they're having intense conversations in Panama or wherever at the moment). I guess you can imagine that Buffy's pining after Angel or Spike or, you know, Riley - whatever your 'ship of choice is. Personally, I think she's saving herself for Justin Timberlake. 


	11. Ruining the Friendship

Getting Off The Griefmobile  
  
By Annakovsky  
  
See part 1 for all relevant info and disclaimer.  
  
***********  
  
CHAPTER ELEVEN  
  
***********  
  
Xander woke up with the sun shining in his window, his curtains blowing in a slight breeze and a cloudless, gorgeous blue sky outside. He couldn't remember why he would have a sick feeling in his stomach, like someone had tied him in a knot, or like the Hellmouth was going to open in a few minutes and all he had were his wits to protect him.   
  
Then he remembered his two major problems. Number one: kissing Willow two nights ago while watching MTV and now being too awkward to talk to each other. Number two: having to go to a fancy dress-up party tonight and pretend that he and Willow were a couple so they could talk to this demon about stopping the apocalypse.   
  
Angel was really crappy at setting up meetings. Bastard.   
  
Buffy was all, oh, it all worked out great! This demon actually happened to be in town, couldn't squeeze them in for a real meeting, but if they came to this private party he could give them five minutes. And Angel was going to get them on the guest list! Well, sure, that was peachy, except that Angel listed them as Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Harris. Thanks, buddy. He said he thought it'd make them fit in more or something at this all-demon and demon-friendly party, since the fake Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Harris were now apparently the owners of a fake catering company specifically geared towards the special needs of demons, supplying them with blood-larvae, live spiders, etc.  
  
Too bad Willow hated spiders.  
  
And he really knew Willow too well to be having this huge awkward stupid thing with her – hadn't they passed that point in their relationship? Besides, having survived to the ripe old age of 22 by some miracle, he should know better than to have half-assed semi-affairs with her, because, if memory served, it would just end with people being impaled and horrible break-ups and mountains of guilt. Not that either of them had anyone to break up with at the moment, but still. Either kiss her in the context of an actual relationship or don't kiss her at all, but sweet merciful Zeus, skulking around kissing in secret is a plan on the level of attacking the Mayor with hummus.   
  
He was trying to convince himself that Anya would want him to move on, but he knew that wasn't true.  
  
"Harris! I'm barely cold in my grave, and you're already making out with her? I always knew you loved Willow more than me."  
  
He was going to throw up any minute now.  
  
He was also pissed off, in general, at everything. At himself for getting into this situation. At Anya for dying on him. At Giles for being gone when he really wanted to hang around him and feel like there was at least one rational, comforting person left in the world. At Buffy for not even figuring out what was going on. At Willow for kissing him when she was *supposed* to be a lesbian and then for doing that whole babbling cutesy I'm-so-rattled-thing and hardly even looking at him afterwards. At Andrew and Dawn for being happy, the lucky bastards.   
  
He had been doing okay with things, getting through the day, whatever. Dealing. But when they kissed he had suddenly felt this huge surge of emotion - first happiness but then a colossal indefinable mass of something else. It was like every emotion he'd ever had was clawing its way up his throat, especially everything he'd been trying not to feel lately, and he almost couldn't stand the pain. He was on the verge of tears and of screaming because it was all too much; he wanted to beat something up, maybe kick God in the shins.   
  
Why is it that when life sucks you can deal with it as long as everybody's being normal, or even mean, but as soon as anybody's nice to you, that's the chink in the armor and that's when you break down?  
  
So he had pulled back from the kiss because he could hardly breathe, feeling like someone had punched him in the stomach. He and Willow were staring at each other and her eyes were wide – and that, of course, was when Buffy had come back and they'd watched that stupid movie. And he and Willow had not talked since then.   
  
That was the sucky part about all this, because they'd just been getting close again after... you know, everything. Growing apart because of college, their respective girlfriends, her attempt to kill all of them and end the world. The usual stuff. But in the last few months they'd been talking again, really talking. When he was in the hospital, they had cried and reminisced and told each other things they never had before. While they were driving around on the bus, they'd spent hours just rambling about random things, getting back to being best-friends, Xander-and-Willow again.   
  
Stupid lips. They mess everything up.   
  
And what made it even more confusing was that he loved Willow, he really did. It's just that the boundaries between best-friend-love and *love*-love were blurring and he didn't know which side of the line he was on. And for Pete's sake, he was grieving and she was *gay*, so it should all be a moot point, right?   
  
He got up and took a shower.  
  
The whole problem was really "The Real World"'s fault for being so boring that you ended up super aware of your best friend's every movement sitting beside you instead of concentrating on the show. If they had been watching a Seinfeld rerun this whole fiasco wouldn't have happened.   
  
He got out of the shower and went down to the kitchen to get breakfast. Buffy and Dawn were there, eating non-fat yogurt and giggling about the respective hotness of Heath Ledger and Josh Hartnett. Then they started talking about nail polish colors. Why the hell was Giles gone when he should be here saving him from a sea of estrogen?   
  
Willow came in, turned bright red when she saw him, and completely avoided meeting his gaze. She grabbed the Raisin Bran and sat down with Dawn and Buffy, chattering away like he wasn't even there.  
  
He had reached an entirely new level of frustration and desperation. He went up to his tool bench and hammered some random things for awhile, as hard as he could, then asked Andrew if he wanted to go to the comic book store.   
  
***********  
  
TBC... 


	12. On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Getting Off The Griefmobile  
  
By Annakovsky  
  
See part 1 for all relevant info and disclaimer.  
  
***********  
  
CHAPTER TWELVE  
  
***********  
  
Andrew had the feeling that Dawn was getting tired of the comic store. Like, for instance, one time she said, "Andrew, I'm tired of the comic store." So he was super excited when Xander asked him to come along. He went to put on his shoes, then headed down to the kitchen where the girls were hanging out, so he could tell Dawn goodbye. She was standing by the refrigerator.  
  
"Hey swee... I mean, Dawn, me and Xander are going to the Great Escape, okay?"  
  
"Sure thing, have fun," she said. He moved in to give her a kiss goodbye, but she looked horrified and took a quick step back.  
  
"Andrew! What did I tell you about PDA?"  
  
"Um... under no circumstances?"  
  
"Exactly," she said. Xander was in the room at this point and opening the outside door.   
  
"Andrew, you coming?" he asked.  
  
"Yeah, just a sec," he said, looking at Dawn. "Um... so, okay, bye then!" He waved enthusiastically, despite the fact that she was two feet away from him. She rolled her eyes and waved back.   
  
"See you later," she said.   
  
He got into the passenger seat beside Xander, in a wave of happiness. Dawn was so, so cool. They were really one of those epic couples, you know, brought together by their fight against evil. Like Han Solo and Princess Leia, or Mulder and Scully. Or Buffy and Spike, maybe. Andrew started musing on the whole Buffy and Spike thing.   
  
"Do you think Buffy will ever love again?" Andrew asked after a bit. Xander shot a look at him.  
  
"What?"  
  
"You know, after Spike."   
  
"You think she was in love with Spike?" asked Xander.  
  
"Well, he got a soul for her - that's, like, right out of an epic romance." Xander snorted.   
  
"Well, it's epic something," he said. Andrew looked at him, but then kept going.  
  
"Besides, there was all that sexual tension between the two of them, and he was really hot and everything. You really don't think she was in love with him?" he asked. Xander got quiet.   
  
"I don't know. Buffy doesn't talk to me about that stuff." He squinted at the road, looking far away and tapping on the steering wheel.   
  
"Yeah, well, I was just thinking that it'd be really hard for her to ever love anybody again, after the love of her life died saving the world and everything." Xander glanced at him, and kind of half laughed.   
  
"Don't worry, I'm pretty sure Buffy will love again. I mean, it'll be rough and all, but I bet you anything she'll have another boyfriend by next year, or at the very latest, Christmas 2004." Andrew looked kind of shocked.   
  
"But... Spike was..."  
  
"Look, she may have loved him, but just because you love one person doesn't mean that you can't love anybody else, ever. You move on when this stuff happens. Even if you don't want to. You can't help it." Xander looked grim.   
  
"But if he was her soulmate..." Andrew trailed off. Xander laughed.  
  
"You believe in...? Okay, Andrew, let me tell you this now - that whole soulmate thing is a bunch of bull made up by greeting card companies seeking to control us." Xander changed lanes, preparing to exit.   
  
"No, it's not. Everybody has a soulmate out there somewhere, and we just have to find them." Andrew smiled, thinking about Dawn.   
  
"Yeah, so how many times have you and Dawn broken up now?" asked Xander pointedly. Andrew paused, a little embarrassed.  
  
"Um, well, five, but that doesn't mean that..."  
  
Xander cut him off. "So what happens if your soulmate dies? You're just screwed then, right, because they're the only person you could ever be with."  
  
"No... well... okay," said Andrew. "Maybe not, then." He paused. After Xander turned left off the exit ramp, he spoke up again in a small voice. "It sucks when people die," Xander didn't respond. Andrew continued. "Like Anya. She was amazing. I don't understand why she had to..."  
  
"Andrew, I really don't want to talk about this again," Xander cut him off.  
  
"Oh. Okay." There was a pause. "So are *you* moving on with things?" Xander looked uncomfortable and shrugged. "You know, you're sort of like James Bond," said Andrew. "His wife got killed, so then he just went back to being single and making out with all the Bond girls. Maybe you should do that." Xander looked a little bit sick.   
  
"While I'm flattered that you're comparing me to James Bond, even if it is just the George Lazenby incarnation, Anya dying is really nothing at all like that." Andrew shrugged. "Besides," said Xander after a second, deciding to give Andrew a break and half smiling, "we don't even have any Bond girls." Andrew grinned.   
  
"Well, there's Faith, but she's in Panama, and Buffy's still getting over the Spike thing, but hey, Willow!" Xander immediately made his face as expressionless as possible. "Oh, no, wait, she's gay, never mind. I guess you'll have to go out and try to meet some Bond girls on your own, then."   
  
"Yeah, I'll put it on the to-do list."  
  
"What's your favorite Bond movie?" Andrew asked, and they were off on a conversation that lasted for most of the rest of the trip. By the time they got back to the house, the worried look on Xander's face was mostly gone. When he saw Willow in the training/ball room, he grinned at her and she couldn't help smiling back.  
  
****************  
  
TBC...  
  
NOTES: The opinions expressed in this chapter are those of the characters and do not reflect the opinions of the author.   
  
I know Spike's a controversial topic, but the conversation in this chapter is really about Xander and Anya, not Spike and Buffy, so please don't review or email telling me either that Buffy and Spike are soulmates and will love forever, or that Spike is incapable of love and the whole thing was a travesty, because I really don't care either way. Sorry. 


	13. BFF!

Getting Off The Griefmobile  
  
By Annakovsky  
  
See part 1 for all relevant info and disclaimer.  
  
***********  
  
CHAPTER THIRTEEN  
  
***********  
  
When Xander grinned at her, that too-wide, brilliant Xander grin, Willow felt a decidedly non-gay burst of delight in her stomach.   
  
Liking Xander wasn't like liking a boy, she thought to herself, it was just liking Xander, who, okay, if you wanted to get technical, had certain boy-like attributes, but that didn't mean that you lost all your lesbian street cred just because you happened to think that your best friend – who just happened to have a penis (like having a birth defect!) – was kind of okay to look at or, you know, maybe kiss once in awhile. It wasn't a big deal. They were just totally platonic friends, but with occasional smooches. Like people who kiss hello, right? Sometimes, you just really needed to say hello in the middle of "The Real World". It could happen to anybody.   
  
Besides, sexual orientation was much more fluid than everyone seemed to think, and according to the Kinsey report, everyone was totally going to think that she had just been going through a phase and was lame-o poseur Lesbian-Until-Graduation girl.   
  
Oh, God. She was a LUG. A complete absolute despicable LUG.   
  
She went on a walk and desperately tried to think about hot girls. Faith, she was hot. Um, Charlize Theron. Angelina Jolie. Xander. DAMNIT. No. Kirsten Dunst. Cameron Diaz. Xander. AARGH!  
  
No! This was all wrong! She was going to go see Charlie's Angels 2 again right now, and if that couldn't get her back in the hot girl mode, well, maybe there was some kind of reprogramming camp she could sign up for.   
  
She stomped back into the house to get her purse, and passed Buffy on the way up to her room.   
  
"Hey, Will, I managed to get a couple of fake wedding rings for you guys to wear tonight at that demon party thing." Willow looked at her blankly. "You know, because Angel signed you up as Mr. and Mrs. Harris? And do you have an evening dress, by the way?"  
  
This day just would not get better, would it? So she found herself out with Buffy in the prom dress section of Dillard's, looking for the perfect dress to wear while she was pretending to be married to Xander.   
  
"How about this one?" Buffy asked holding up a green dress.   
  
"The color's a little too reminiscent of Anya's bridesmaid's dresses," Willow commented. Buffy looked at it and made a face.  
  
"Whoa, sorry." She put it back on the rack and continued looking. "So Will, how've you been doing, lately?"  
  
"Um... fine. Fine. And yourself?"  
  
"Oh, I'm good. I just ask 'cause you've been acting a little weird the last two days."  
  
"Really?" Willow realized that her voice was about two octaves too high on that one.   
  
"Yeah, pretty much exactly like that," said Buffy dryly. "So spill already. What's the deal?"  
  
"Nothing! I'm fine." Willow hadn't realized how much she was out of the habit of telling Buffy what was going on with her. Had she really used to talk with her for hours about how she had a crush on Xander, or how she liked Oz's hands? "I'm fine. Totally okay. No problems here!" Buffy nodded slowly and looked away.   
  
"Right," she said, sounding sad. She started looking very hard at the dresses on the rack. "Okay, so how do you feel about strapless?"  
  
"No, Buffy, wait. Okay. I am a little, um, freaked." Buffy looked at her and gave a small smile.   
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Yeah." Willow took a deep breath. "I, um... may not be quite as gay as I had thought. Less flaming and more, um, sparkling. Or flickering."   
  
"You're sparklingly gay?" Buffy looked confused.   
  
"I think I like a boy again," Willow said. She could feel her face turning beet red and she turned her full attention to looking through the dresses.  
  
"You... what? Wait, what? Who?"  
  
"No one in particular, just, you know, in general I might sort of like boys in an aesthetic kind of non-practical in-no-way-acted-upon thought-life kind of way." Buffy stared at her, now looking very bewildered. Then her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open.  
  
"Oh my God, you don't like... *Andrew*... do you?" She almost whispered the Andrew part, in the way you might say 'herpes' or 'gonorrhea' if you were asking your friend about the burning when she peed.   
  
"What? Oh, no." Willow was very taken aback by that. She laughed. "No. Andrew? No."  
  
"Then who... oh. Oh. OH." It was interesting how many ways a person could say the word 'oh'.   
  
"Yeah," said Willow.  
  
"You don't... no way. Xander?" Willow nodded. "Wow. That's... wow. Kind of... are you serious? I mean... WOW."  
  
"Stop saying that! You're making me freak out more."   
  
"Sorry, I just..." Buffy shook her head as if trying to clear it. "Okay, so does he know about this?"  
  
"Well, there may have been an incident involving his lips... and my lips... and them kind of... colliding."   
  
"Ohmygod, you *kissed*?" Buffy's voice was getting kind of loud.  
  
"Shhh! No!" Buffy looked at her. She groaned. "Well, not if it's opposite day."  
  
"Will, this is huge! Huge! Why didn't you say anything?"  
  
"I was in denial! And I'm having a massive sexual identity crisis! Buffy, what do I do? I feel terrible."   
  
"Why? So you're bi. That's allowed, right? I mean, I thought you were always bi. You loved Oz, you loved Tara, whatever. Right? Am I totally off base here?"  
  
"Yeah, I guess. I just feel like everybody's going to think I was faking being gay or something, or just experimenting."  
  
"Oh, c'mon, Will. Anybody who saw you and Tara together... well, I guess that's limited to, like, four of us, but still."  
  
"I guess." Willow went back to glumly looking through dresses.   
  
"So is Xander a good kisser?"  
  
"Buffy!" Willow turned red. Buffy grinned at her. She started to smile herself. "Well, let's just say that he's improved in technique since senior year. And he wasn't exactly bad then."  
  
"Will, I am making it my mission to find you the perfect dress. Xander won't know what hit him."   
  
They beamed at each other. Willow had forgotten how good it felt to have a best friend.   
  
*****************  
  
TBC... 


	14. Watching the World Pass You By

Getting Off The Griefmobile  
  
By Annakovsky  
  
See part 1 for all relevant info and disclaimer.  
  
***********  
  
CHAPTER FOURTEEN  
  
***********  
  
Buffy had been happy, sort of, the last few months. Cheery, even, sometimes. Leaving Sunnydale had felt like a weight off, not to mention not being the only Chosen One anymore. Even this stuff with the First again - for some reason she felt like the group was handling it, it wasn't all on her shoulders. Maybe it was just being in another place, things feeling different in Kentucky. Maybe her savior complex was buried somewhere in the Sunnydale crater along with everything else she used to own. However it happened, she felt unburdened, unlonelified - like part of a community again, not isolated anymore.   
  
Until she waved at Willow and Xander as they drove off in evening-wear, and then Dawn and Andrew, holding hands, said something about a local band playing and being back late. Until she was alone in the suddenly huge house, everyone in love but her.   
  
The day had been pretty great up 'til then. She and Willow had talked and giggled and shopped and she was seriously having flashbacks to high school. And it was so unexpected – it had been so long since she and Willow had acted like real friends that every time Willow grinned at her or told her something about Xander or acted extra-Willow-y, Buffy felt a shocked kind of joy and delight. It was like Christmas morning when you were five, only better – it was like, if you were five and had woken up on a day you thought you were going to go to the doctor and get shots, and instead you had found out it was Christmas morning and you had gotten a pony. It was like finding your childhood blankie after you thought it was lost forever, or like your parents suddenly telling you out of nowhere that they were getting back together again. Everything you never expected coming true, and being better than you had imagined.   
  
Willow had Buffy come into the dressing room with her, help her with the zippers and girly dress things. When Willow began to change clothes, Buffy was taken aback by the intimacy of it, the sisterly-ness of it. Willow looked fragile in her white cotton underwear, pale skin stretched too thin and marked by freckles like tiny bullet holes. The bones of her shoulder-blades jutted out sharply, thin and breakable.  
  
It was hard to imagine that this vulnerable girl was the one monster that had scared Buffy the most. Hard to imagine how close Willow had come to killing everyone, with her skin so pale and her eyes so big.   
  
Buffy wondered what it would be like to love someone and not have pain mixed in with the love, mixed so thoroughly the two were impossible to separate.   
  
But she had focused on the love today, of having a best friend, of being a best friend. They had gone out for smoothies and gossiped and Buffy had tried to make Willow feel better about liking Xander. She found herself saying the right words, like a long-forgotten song you find that you still know. They were remembering, both of them, falling back into the rhythm of everyday friendship, of just talking about Julia Roberts' hair instead of having business-like conversations about how to defeat the evil of the week.   
  
They had found a dress, one in deep blue that Willow looked right in. Back at home, Buffy had sat on the closed toilet seat and talked to Willow as she did her make-up, helped her do her hair. Rituals of getting ready, of girl friendship in America.   
  
Later Buffy stood at the foot of the stairs with Xander, the fake wedding rings in her hand as Willow came down, looking nervous and beautiful. Xander stood with his hands in his pockets, looking at Willow and not saying anything. Buffy filled the silence with nervous chatter, handing them the rings and feeling ridiculously like the best man.   
  
Xander looked at the ring on his left hand for a moment, a strange lost look on his face. But then he looked up at Willow and grinned, a reassuring flash of lightning. She tentatively smiled back and he offered her his arm.   
  
"Good luck talking to our demon contact," Buffy said. "Be careful."  
  
"Don't worry, Buff, we're all over it," said Xander. "This demon party won't know what hit them."   
  
"Well, I'd be happier if there were no hitting involved, but metaphorically, sure," Buffy said.   
  
The three friends smiled at each other.   
  
But now Buffy sat on the front stairs in the empty house as it got dark outside, arms wrapped around her knees.   
  
She wished Giles and Faith were home. She wished she knew anybody in Louisville. She wished they had gotten a dog back in Arizona when they'd passed that Humane Society shelter and Dawn had wanted one.   
  
She ended up getting into the only car left at home and driving, not having any idea where she was going, just needing to be out of the house.   
  
Somehow she ended up on the Indiana side of the river, sitting at a random picnic table near the shore and watching the water move, looking at the stars. Loneliness had always been an outdoor activity for her – back in Sunnydale she had usually ended up on the porch of their house, like she needed to give her self-pity enough room to really stretch out and relax.   
  
Why was it that when you had a calling to save the world from evil, you could still have the aimless feeling that you had no idea what you were going to do with your life?  
  
She suddenly wanted to be Huck Finn, make a raft and drift down the river in the dark, the soft lapping of the waves lulling you to sleep and during the day the hot sun on your face, your bare feet in the water. The quiet of it, floating away to who knows where. Alone and still and not concerned with where you would end up.   
  
She eventually pulled herself away from the hypnotic movement of the water and decided to patrol before heading back home. She knew the loneliness would pass, that soon she'd be sitting at the kitchen counter drinking hot chocolate with Dawn or Willow and gossiping about their date/non-date. But for now she wanted the empty graveyard and the simple, solitary movement of slaying.   
  
She rested her head on the steering wheel before turning the key in the ignition, wondering when life would get easy.   
  
*************  
  
TBC... 


	15. PC Load Letter

Getting Off The Griefmobile  
  
By Annakovsky  
  
See part 1 for all relevant info and disclaimer.  
  
***********  
  
CHAPTER FIFTEEN  
  
***********  
  
The plain gold ring felt cold on Xander's finger, even after he had been wearing it a half hour.   
  
He wondered what would have happened if he had gone through with marrying Anya. Stood in front of everyone they knew and promised to love her forever. Slipped a ring onto her finger.   
  
They'd have celebrated their first anniversary by now, and he'd be waking up every morning to find her breathing lightly beside him.   
  
Or more likely he'd still be a widower, but one everyone would have to acknowledge. He could meet new people and say that, say "I'm a widower," and they'd immediately look sorry and understand. So young to lose a wife. So sad. Instead of the complex mess of what he and Anya had been, he'd just have a word to say, to sum it up, all his feelings.  
  
If he had known that she would die this year, would he have married her last year? The answer was probably, and he felt vaguely ashamed of that fact.   
  
He tried to pretend for a moment that it was Anya sitting beside him in the car, but it was Willow, thoroughly Willow, smelling of Dove soap and Herbal Essences shampoo, everything about her familiar in a way that Anya had never quite been.   
  
He suddenly found himself imagining a red-headed toddler in the rearview mirror, asleep in her car-seat and clutching the ragged blanket she carried everywhere. It was a little too easy to picture. And instead of feeling the nine kinds of wrong it should feel, the image seemed natural. Predictable. Like home.   
  
The demon party was downtown at the Pendennis Club, some exclusive, members-only, country club kind of place.  
  
"Mr. and Mrs. Harris," Xander said to the man with the guest list. His voice sounded a little constricted, and Willow shot him an understanding look. He gave a little nod and looked down.   
  
"First names?" the man asked.  
  
"Alexander and Willow," Xander added. The man checked their names off and gestured for them to move into the party. So Angel had come through after all.   
  
They began to walk through the tuxedos and evening gowns. If you didn't look at the faces, you could pretend that this was a normal, upscale shindig of the sort that Xander and Willow never went to. If you did look at the faces, you were in danger of making little "eep" noises, even if you had spent your entire adolescence seeing demons every week. Of course, most of those demons had also been trying to kill you, so maybe it was no wonder your gut reflex was to punch them between the eyes.   
  
They started looking for the demon they were meant to meet; Angel had emailed them a picture. Well, someone on his staff had, anyway. He looked something like Clem, only redder.   
  
Xander thought about getting Willow some punch, until he saw that the things floating in it weren't so much pieces of fruit as little insect corpses. Okay, so no food.   
  
Willow slipped her hand into his as they walked through the crowd. He looked over at her and she smiled tentatively. He was about to say something, tell her they should talk, when Willow's eyes got wide and she tugged on his hand.  
  
"There he is, right? Over there by the... giant squid?" Xander looked.  
  
"Yeah, I see him. Here goes nothing - though it'd probably be better if you avoided referring to calamari in front of his friend there." They started walking over to their contact, who spotted them and swallowed his appetizer.   
  
"Ah, the Harrises," the contact said, wiping his hand on his vest. "Nice to meet you. I'm Adolph Hitler." He held out his hand to shake.   
  
"Excuse me?" asked Willow, her eyes wide. The contact looked peeved.   
  
"I know, I know. You have a name for 300 years, a perfectly fine name, and then all of a sudden some no-talent ass clown starts conquering Poland and..." he chuckled suddenly. "I'm just kidding with you. You kids seen 'Office Space'?" He was shaking Willow's hand. Willow looked vaguely shell-shocked.  
  
"Great movie," said Xander.   
  
"Classic," agreed 'Adolf', shaking Xander's hand next. "I'm Cal, actually."  
  
"Cal," Willow repeated vaguely.  
  
"Well, close enough," he replied.   
  
"So, Cal, is there someplace we can talk about setting up this meeting?" asked Xander.   
  
"Sure, I think I can find us a quiet corner. Follow me." Cal set off across the room, greeting half the demons in the room with a hearty back slap and booming laugh. Willow gave Xander a look. He half shrugged back at her.  
  
Cal finally found a small room with expensive looking furniture that no other guests seemed to be using.   
  
"So Angel tells me you want a meeting with the big fellas," Cal began, sitting in one chair and gesturing at them to sit on the couch across.   
  
"That's right," said Willow. "About the First Evil."   
  
"Right, right," said Cal. "That goofball just never knows when to quit." He laughed. Xander and Willow stared at him. "Let me give you kids a quick friendly tip about the meeting," Cal said, leaning over. "You want to have a good presentation. And the Powers really like Powerpoint. Things to keep in mind." He took another sip of his drink.   
  
"So you can get us a meeting?" asked Xander, shaking his head a little as if to clear it.   
  
"Sure, sure. Now let's talk business."  
  
"Business?" asked Willow.  
  
"You don't get something for nothing in this world, sweetie. Let's make a deal."  
  
"Um... okay," Willow said. "So what do you want us to do for you?"  
  
"First of all, I want a certain tablet. A incantation invoking the god Enki. I have its catalog number here with me."  
  
"A tablet?" Xander asked.  
  
"From Mesopotamia, yes. And also, Regis Philbin's autograph."  
  
"You want... have you tried writing to him yourself?" Willow asked. Cal held up his rather stubby, three-fingered hand apologetically.  
  
"Fine motor control isn't a hallmark of my species. So what do you kids say? Deal?" Xander and Willow looked at each other. Both were wondering what exactly the tablet said and what kind of magic this character wanted.   
  
"Well... could we get back to you after we consult with our people?" Xander asked.   
  
"Sure, sure, of course," said Cal. "Have Angel let me know." He stood up. "Nice meeting you kids. Best wishes." He shook their hands again and headed for the door. They heard him greet someone genially just outside and rested their heads against the back of the couch, feeling vaguely as though a tornado had come through.   
  
******  
  
TBC...  
  
******  
  
NOTES: The Pendennis Club is also a real place in Louisville, an exclusive, members-only club that only allowed women equal access to all its facilities in the last five years, and only desegregated in the last ten. So if demons were having a party anywhere in Louisville... yeah. The funny thing is that the street where this historically racist club is located had its name changed to "Muhammed Ali Boulevard", which I think is pretty damn funny.  
  
And Office Space really is a great movie. 


	16. Love Is A Social Disease

Getting Off The Griefmobile  
  
By Annakovsky  
  
See part 1 for all relevant info and disclaimer.  
  
***********  
  
CHAPTER SIXTEEN  
  
***********  
  
Dawn had made Andrew come to the Mall St. Matthews with her to buy some new jeans for the fall. She loved being one of the girls making her boyfriend wait outside the changing rooms. She loved having a guy to carry the shopping bags when she was done. She loved holding hands as they walked over to the food court.   
  
She was starting to feel weirdly protective of Andrew. Like if Buffy or Xander made fun of him, she would stick up for him. She made fun of him herself, of course, but other people weren't allowed to anymore. They didn't understand enough, didn't like him enough underneath the teasing.   
  
Besides, the rest of them didn't see it but he was really pretty sensitive, pretty unsure of himself. Dawn didn't like it when he got that hurt look, that retreating, I'm-not-worth-anything look. Andrew was goofy and dorky and most of the time didn't even notice when people were making fun of him, he was that clueless, but sometimes... well, things hurt him, and she didn't like him looking that way.   
  
They were standing in line at the cookie place and discussing chocolate chips versus macadamia nuts when someone called Dawn's name.   
  
"Dawnie! Is that you?" Both their heads turned to see a familiar, loose-skinned, cheerful demon waving and walking towards them. The other people in the mall were giving him the sidelong, trying-not-to-look glances that made it obvious they thought he had some kind of disfiguring skin condition.   
  
"Clem?" Dawn asked, starting to smile. Andrew looked confused as the two of them hugged, the big skin wrinkles on Clem's arms flapping happily. "What on earth are you doing here?"  
  
"Well, I was just passing through the city on my way east. And I really needed a new pair of sneakers and I heard that the fourth season of Friends is out on DVD, so I thought I'd stop at the mall, and here you are! What a small world, huh? What are you doing in Louisville? Is everyone else here?"  
  
"Yeah, yeah, we live here now. Me and Buffy and the whole gang. Oh, and this is Andrew. I don't think you guys ever met. Andrew, this is Clem."  
  
"Pleasure," Andrew said weakly as Clem shook his hand.  
  
"Likewise," Clem said. "Any friend of Dawn's...." He winked at her cheerfully.   
  
  
  
"Oh my gosh, Clem, you totally have to come back to the house with us and see everybody!" Dawn paused in her excitement and was suddenly sad. "Well, everyone that's here, anyway." She blinked hard. "You heard about Anya, right? And... Spike." Clem looked sad too.   
  
"Yeah, I sure did." He paused, looking down. "He was a good friend. Figures that he'd go out with a huge gesture. How're you all doing?"  
  
Dawn shrugged. "We... I don't know. Okay. Buffy doesn't talk about it much. But things are... better than they used to be, I guess. I don't know. It's confusing." Dawn still didn't know how she felt about Spike these days. Who knew what had happened between him and her sister, and he'd died to save them and whatever, but... well, she tried not to think about it too much. Too many emotions.   
  
"Yeah," Clem said. "And do you all know anything about... I've heard these rumors, everyone getting scared again."  
  
"About the First?" Andrew asked.   
  
"Uh huh," Clem said. "People are nervous. Constant apocalypses are wearing, you know? Put a lot of miles on my car fleeing the last one."  
  
"Yeah," said Dawn. "We're all working on it, actually. Maybe you could help out. Willow and Xander just met with this demon last night to get a meeting with the Powers That Be and he wants this tablet that they're not sure is dangerous or not and they don't know what to do. When we left they hadn't gotten in touch with Giles yet."  
  
"Giles?" asked Clem. They had all started walking towards the mall exit. "Where's he?"  
  
"Oh, he and Faith are finding all the new Slayers – did you hear about how we created all these new ones? It was awesome, Willow..."  
  
They kept up the update as they walked to the parking lot, and then Clem followed them back to the house in his new Beetle.   
  
Dawn burst into the house. "Guys? You will never guess who we ran into at the mall." Willow, Xander and Buffy were all at the kitchen table, talking in low voices and looking worried. They looked up at Dawn's exclamation and smiled when they saw Clem.   
  
After all the greetings and what-have-you-been-up-tos and what-are-you-doing-heres, they were all sitting at the table and Andrew was somehow serving them tea and homemade cookies.   
  
"Wow, you've really got a keeper here, huh Dawnie?" Clem said, smiling at her as he took a cookie. She blushed and shrugged. He turned to the rest of them. "So what was the name of this demon that you met with?"  
  
"Cal," Xander said.   
  
"Cal? Hey, jolly guy, around my height, big Regis fan?"  
  
"Yeah, pretty much," said Willow. "You know him?"   
  
"He's my second cousin," said Clem. "Two or three times removed. So what'd he ask you for?"  
  
"Well, Regis's autograph and then this tablet," said Buffy, passing him a piece of paper with the specifications on it. Clem looked at it carefully, then made an embarrassed face.  
  
"Oh," he said. "Interesting."  
  
"What's it for?" Xander asked.   
  
"Well," Clem said. He paused. "It's got a spell on it that cures a... um... social disease."  
  
"What do you mean, a social..." Dawn started to ask, before trailing off and looking grossed out. "Never mind, I get it."   
  
"So it's not dangerous?" Buffy asked, business-like.  
  
"Nope," said Clem. "But I don't know where it is, though I think I heard that it went into a private collection sometime in the '70s."  
  
"Giles will know how to find it," said Willow confidently. "And he should call tonight."  
  
"So in the meantime I'll call Angel to get him to tell Cal that the deal's on. Then Will, could you find the address and write to Regis's people for the autograph?" Buffy asked.   
  
Willow nodded and started to get up and head to her laptop. "I'll see if I can find any information on that tablet, too," she said.   
  
"I'll help," said Xander, following her. Willow glanced at him as they left the room, her expression unreadable.   
  
They all began their work, the house now feeling energized and focused. Dawn and Andrew, left with nothing much to do personally, asked Clem if he wanted to play Monopoly.   
  
******  
  
TBC...  
  
****** 


	17. Not Having Faith

Getting Off The Griefmobile  
  
By Annakovsky  
  
See part 1 for all relevant info and disclaimer.  
  
***********  
  
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN  
  
***********  
  
Faith came back from the bathroom and settled into the seat next to Giles in the Frankfort am Main airport. They had a three hour layover before catching their flight to Tel Aviv, and Faith was restless. She crossed her legs one way, eyeing a security guard, then crossed them back, then uncrossed them and slumped down low in the chair, trying to look unconcerned. One of the airline type people glanced at her, fiddling with his walkie-talkie. She instinctively reached for her stake, just wanting to know it was there, but she had had to put everything that even remotely looked like a weapon in her checked baggage.   
  
Even if she did have the best faked passport that Willow, with a combination of magic and technology, could get her, she was still nervous she'd be recognized as an escaped fugitive. She wondered if the guy standing by the magazine stand was looking at her suspiciously, so glared at him until he looked away. She crossed her legs again, then decided to sit cross-legged in the chair, tapping her fingers absently on the armrest as she continued to scan the area.  
  
"Faith, for the love of God," Giles said. "You're making me nervous. Go buy a magazine."  
  
"They're all in German," she said, still looking around at the crowd and not at him. There was more than one reason she was twitchy. Giles, exasperated, pulled out his wallet and handed her a five Euro note.   
  
"Then go get a snack. I'll have a ginger ale." Faith rolled her eyes at him, but got up, half-relieved to have something to do. Giles opened his newspaper and watched her go over the top of it.   
  
The night before, Giles had called Buffy from their hotel. Faith had been in his room flopped on the bed, flipping channels and trying to find something in English. Giles was sitting in the warm glow of the lamp, talking quietly and affectionately into the phone. Faith listened to them until it got to be too much. Overwhelmed, she jumped up and walked quickly to the door to her adjoining room, where she sat in the dark and stared out the window for awhile at the city below.   
  
When she finally turned, Giles was in the doorway looking at her.   
  
"What?" she asked, self-conscious. He just raised his eyebrows a little bit, waiting for her to talk. Faith sighed. Sometimes the new full disclosure, total honesty thing that they had going on was annoying. She looked at him helplessly, then looked away.   
  
"Sometimes I get so fucking jealous of Buffy I think it's going to kill me," she muttered. She looked up, bit the inside of her cheek. "She really doesn't realize how good she has it."  
  
"No," Giles said. "To Buffy the glass is usually half empty." He sighed and sat down on the bed, taking off his glasses.   
  
Faith looked at him as he pinched the bridge of his nose. "What's it like being a Watcher?" she asked finally. Giles looked grave and replaced his glasses.  
  
"Terrifying."   
  
"Worth it?"   
  
"I don't know." He looked sad, sort of. She was the one just looking at him now, eyebrows slightly raised and waiting for him to talk. He glanced at her.   
  
"They don't tell you anything useful, you know, in training. Not what to do when your Slayer insists on falling in love with vampires. Not how to parent her and all her friends. I never feel like I've... it's never enough. I worry."   
  
"Sucks to be the grownup."  
  
Giles slightly exhaled in a rueful almost-laugh. "Yes."   
  
Faith got up and walked across the room, which was still dark except for the streetlights tossing bands of light through the window.   
  
"You want a drink? I think there's a minibar in here. Thank God for Buenos Aires and civilization, right?"   
  
"Scotch," said Giles. She poured him a glass, grabbed a tiny bottle for herself and walked back to the window and looked outside again. There was a cool breeze blowing. Giles came and stood next to her.   
  
"Watching isn't all bad," he said. "I suppose with all the bumps I've taken to the head, I should be glad to be alive." She glanced at him sharply and then looked away, blinking at the city lights. The night air was cool and sharp.   
  
"My first Watcher died," she said very quietly. He didn't respond for a while, so long that she thought he hadn't heard her.   
  
"Kakistos," he said. "I remember."  
  
"Yeah," she said. "She... I liked her. She was about the only adult that ever gave a shit."   
  
Giles leaned against the window frame, seeming to deflate, his shoulders slumping. "I'm sorry we didn't do better by you in Sunnydale. We... I wasn't paying enough attention. I should have made sure you were all right, done more."  
  
Faith shrugged. "'S okay. You were dealing with a lot of stuff with Buffy. I understood."   
  
"Buffy isn't the only person who matters."  
  
"Reeeally?" Faith said dryly, the 'you could've fooled me' strongly implied. She downed the rest of her drink as Giles ran his hand through his hair and sighed.  
  
Faith turned slightly to half face him. His face was shadowed, softened and unreal in the darkness. The noises drifting up from the street sounded far away and made the hotel room seem even quieter, removed from the rest of the world.   
  
She was still half buzzed from being at the bar downstairs earlier, and lonely, so lonely. The Scoobs back in the States were all being best friends, supporting each other, caring, sunshine and happiness. She was in a dark, crappy hotel room in Argentina and no one in the whole world really loved her. But here was Giles, caring.   
  
She reached up and touched his cheek, then stood on her tiptoes and leaned in, kissing him softly. He seemed stunned, stood stock still. His lips were soft.   
  
She pulled back after a moment, when he didn't respond. "Sorry."  
  
"Faith, I..."  
  
"Don't. I just... sorry. No big deal. Momentary weakness and all that." She moved away into the center of the room. He stood by the window, still looking at her. She turned on a light and flipped on the TV, trying to dispel the quiet and the dark.  
  
"Faith."   
  
"I think I'm going to hit the sack. We're heading out tomorrow, right? I heard about the tablet thingy when you were talking to Buffy."  
  
"Yes."   
  
"Cool. Gotta get some sleep first, though. See you tomorrow." She went into the bathroom and closed the door. When she came out again, he was gone. It took a long time for her to fall asleep.   
  
And now she came by from the snack stand, handed him his ginger ale. They were both acting relentlessly normal, as if behaving that way would make it so.   
  
Faith hated airports. You were always just putting in time, waiting to get to real places, where real things happened. And the seats were too close together, so that every time you moved your elbows brushed. You wouldn't think that with your arms touching you could feel so far apart.   
  
******  
  
TBC...  
  
****** 


	18. Out of Place and Inappropriate

Getting Off The Griefmobile  
  
By Annakovsky  
  
See part 1 for all relevant info and disclaimer.  
  
***********  
  
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN  
  
***********  
  
Their taxi drove into Jerusalem in the early afternoon and they immediately went to their hotel to sleep off the jet lag. Giles's meeting with the antiquities collector who owned the tablet wasn't for a day or so, so there was nothing to do for the moment but sleep.   
  
Faith was woken by a loud chanting call some time later, confused and sweaty. She fumbled for the bedside lamp and a clock. 8:47 pm. It took her a minute to realize that the chanting was the Muslim prayer call, coming from the minaret across the street. She cursed organized religion under her breath, rolled over and tried to go back to sleep.   
  
It was damn hot in Jerusalem in August. She was sleeping naked but it was still too hot to be comfortable. She tossed and turned, the sheets sticking to her sweaty body. Eventually she gave up on sleep, got up and took a cold shower before getting dressed.   
  
She wandered through the Old City, its narrow streets and lit shops. Orthodox children, boys in yarmulkes and side curls, played with a soccer ball in a square in the Jewish quarter. Eventually Faith turned down a street and saw the Wailing Wall with the Dome of the Rock hovering above and behind it, lit up and golden. The night was cooler outside than in her hotel room, a slight breeze blowing. She went through the security check at the Wall, glad that her stakes were wooden and didn't set off the metal detectors. She went all the way up to it on the women's side, touched the stones and looked at all the people there, pressing prayers into the cracks and belonging. She was the outsider, walking through the open plaza full of worshippers - she hadn't realized there was so much empty space around the wall. Empty and dark. She was restless.   
  
She left the Old City, made her way to the more modern part of the city, to Ben Yehuda street, where she found a club. This was familiar, this was home. Justin Timberlake was playing, for God's sake, and Shaggy, Michael Jackson. She gave herself to the dance beat, soon had a crowd of guys around her. Moths to a flame, baby. She moved her hips, watched her complete control over them, watched how she was the only thing that existed to them at that moment. Felt that she mattered, reflected in their glassy eyes.   
  
Drunk off her ass, she took one back with her to the hotel, gave herself up to another rhythm. She had picked the one with the worst English, so they didn't have to speak. He kept trying to look into her eyes, but she wouldn't meet them. It was just bodies banging together in a desolate room. His hair smelled like smoke.   
  
Sex was never enough anymore. Twenty minutes and she was back in the world again, but sweatier and with a dark-eyed guy she wished were already gone. At least now she'd probably be able to sleep.   
  
Another ten minutes and she was putting him out in the hall. He had a broken look in his eyes, not understanding, and she flashed to Xander, at another hotel a long time ago.   
  
Giles came out into the hall at that moment, looked startled when he saw the two of them, Faith only wearing a sheet, the guy half dressed. She met Giles's eyes defiantly, chin up, daring him to speak. He looked away quickly, a tinge of hurt on his face. Quietly he excused himself and went back into his room.   
  
"So long," Faith said to her soup du jour, forcing a cheerless smile and shutting the door in his face.   
  
Right before she fell asleep she wondered what it felt like to be happy.   
  
She woke the next morning to the minaret call at 4:30, then again at six, then to church bells at eight, and finally to someone banging on her door at noon. She had a hell of a hangover, almost overbalancing when she stood up. She stumbled to the door and pulled it open, eyes crusty feeling and still half closed. Giles was standing there. He quickly looked pretty damn shocked.   
  
It took Faith a minute to realize that she'd been sleeping naked and was still clothes-free. Her head was pretty fuzzy.   
  
"God," she said. "Sorry. Hang on." She shut the door and tried to find her clothes, eventually pulling on jeans and a tank top without underwear, since she couldn't find any. She shook her head slightly, trying to clear it, and immediately regretted it. She opened the door again. Giles seemed to be somewhere between amusement and embarrassment.   
  
"Hey," she said, repressing an urge to cross her arms over her chest. "What's up?"  
  
"I wondered if you wanted lunch," he said, very carefully not looking any lower than her face. She felt queasy at the idea of food.   
  
"Uh...." She must have looked green, because Giles was immediately concerned. He reached over a hand and felt her forehead.   
  
"Maybe some water would be a bit better," he said, understanding. His hand felt warm and dry, welcome. She started walking back to bed, but stumbled. He caught her and, holding her arm, walked her across the room. His grip was strong and firm, reassuring. She felt like she was going to throw up.   
  
He filled up a glass of water and brought it back to her with a few aspirin, as well as a cool, wet washcloth. He watched her take the pills, and placed the washcloth carefully on her forehead. His expression was kind, almost loving, until she looked up at him. Then he was distant.  
  
"I'll check on you this evening," he said quietly. "Feel better." She heard the door shut behind him, but didn't feel like lifting her head.   
  
She slept for a long time.   
  
******  
  
TBC...  
  
******  
  
NOTE: Nothing like hearing a prayer call at 4:30 in the morning to make you glad you're Christian. Lazy American Christian, to boot.   
  
Also, despite the fact that I previously said in Chapter 17 that they were going to Damascus, I changed my mind and sent them to Jerusalem instead. It may be less exotic, but the story needs a more Westernized place. Anyway, I changed it in the previous chapter too, but I hope I didn't confuse anyone. The hazards of a poorly thought through WIP. 


	19. Life Sucks, Then You Die

Getting Off The Griefmobile  
  
By Annakovsky  
  
See part 1 for all relevant info and disclaimer.  
  
***********  
  
CHAPTER NINETEEN  
  
***********  
  
Giles had finished making all the phone calls he needed, set up all his appointments, and so had the afternoon free. And as Faith was out of commission, he had the time completely to himself.   
  
He was on edge, fidgety, and so decided to go on a long walk, setting off in the direction of the Mount of Olives. The sun was hot, the streets dusty, and the leaves of the olive trees were rustling and glinting silver.   
  
He was thinking about Faith, asleep in the hotel room. Faith who reminded him so strongly of his own youth, of Ethan. Both of them with their dark hair and wicked, flashing eyes, daring him to go against his better judgment.   
  
He had been dreaming about her kissing him, the taste of scotch still smoky in his mouth and her hand on his cheek. It had been a long time since he had kissed anyone, too long. He had been dreaming of her lips on his when he woke to hear thumping in the next room. Then Faith moaning.  
  
He was an old fool. He tried to go back to sleep, but eventually had to go sit in the bathroom, where he couldn't hear them, with his head in his hands. After a bit he decided to get ice from the machine, and inadvertently ran into the two of them in the hallway. Faith was flushed and beautiful, her hair mussed. The man was very young, maybe nineteen.   
  
He was half angry. He wasn't sure about the other half.  
  
From the Mount of Olives he turned to view all of Jerusalem spread out across the valley from him. He leaned against a gnarled old tree to look, annoyed when a tour guide shepherded a large group of sightseers past him. He overheard the guide saying that some of the trees were so old that they might date back as far as the life of Christ.   
  
The trees were in quite a different world these days, irrelevant, just relics of the past. He suddenly felt angry at them, still hanging about long after their heyday was past. What was the point of their existing? He pushed himself off from the old tree and turned away to begin walking back to the city.  
  
In front of him was Deidre, one of the old crowd, as he'd last seen her, just 21. Her eyes were bright, he could smell her perfume, and she stood in her familiar stance, weight on her left leg. He froze.  
  
"God, you've changed, Ripper," she said.   
  
"Go away," he said coldly to the First. "Don't you ever get tired of this nonsense?" He walked away, down the hill. Not-Deidre followed.   
  
"Make sure you don't break a hip," she said. "Old and decrepit as you are." He rolled his eyes and kept walking, not looking at her. When he turned a corner, she stood in front of him again.   
  
"I know you don't want me anymore. Enjoy banging the young one, then."   
  
"Fuck off," he said, coldly furious, glaring. She winked at him, and vanished.   
  
He had to walk for quite awhile to gain his composure.   
  
When he got back to the hotel, he went to again check on Faith, expecting to find her still in bed. But she was up and dressed, looking pale, but better.   
  
"I think I better eat," she said. They went to a pizza place at her request.   
  
They talked of inconsequential things, the minutiae of traveling. Towards the end of the meal, Faith focused in on a spot on his face and picked up a napkin. She reached across the table and wiped a bit of sauce off his chin.  
  
"You got a little schmutz there," she said.  
  
He looked away, blinking, trying to get his bearings. After a moment he looked back at her. "What exactly are you playing at?" he asked, his voice low and tightly controlled.   
  
"What?" She looked uneasy. "Nothing."  
  
Irritated, he breathed deep, leaned back in his chair. "Fine."  
  
"Sorry, I don't know what you're talking about." She was guarded, wary.   
  
He sighed, rubbed his forehead. Changed the subject. "Well, perhaps we should talk about your habits. Having a hangover that incapacitates you for an entire day isn't exactly conducive to our mission."  
  
She stared at him. "What?" He looked back at her, sober and adult. "Oh, so I'm not allowed to have fun now?"  
  
"I'm not saying you can't enjoy yourself, I'm just suggesting that you be more circumspect in your choices..."  
  
Faith interrupted him. "Whatever, don't go all Stuffy Giles on me, 'cause first of all, that shtick is played, and second of all, I know you. You had your share of wild nights back in the day."   
  
"Most of which I regret." He thought of Ethan holding a tattoo needle out towards him, a gleam in his eye. Of hallucinations and euphoric power, of flesh on flesh, nights of dark frenzy. Then of weeping at Randall's funeral, overcome by guilt and grief. "You have no idea how dangerous it can be."  
  
"Hey, I'm a Slayer. I think I can handle myself." Faith looked a little offended.   
  
"Oh, and I suppose you had that young man undergo a blood test before you brought him back to the hotel last night."   
  
"Dude, Giles, we used a condom." She was staring at him, then smirked slightly. "What, you jealous or something?"  
  
Annoyed, he waved his hand dismissively. "I'm concerned that you're going to have to deal with consequences much more far-reaching than you seem to expect."  
  
She looked older, suddenly, and tired. "Never thought I'd even live this long, Giles. Seriously doubt that I'll have a middle age to regret this stuff in."   
  
He had forgotten that part of the Slayer legacy, somehow. It surprised him how sick it made him feel to think of Faith in an early grave.  
  
"Don't look at me like that," she said, uncomfortable and beginning to squirm.   
  
"Is all this what you want?" he asked gently, after a moment.   
  
She shrugged. "Passes the time." She was tearing her paper napkin into small pieces, carefully making them each the same size. Absorbed, she didn't say anything for a minute. Then she spoke softly. "Nothing in my life has been exactly what I wanted."  
  
There wasn't anything much to say to that.   
  
******  
  
TBC...  
  
****** 


	20. Without the Shedding of Blood

Getting Off The Griefmobile  
  
By Annakovsky  
  
See part 1 for all relevant info and disclaimer.  
  
***********  
  
CHAPTER TWENTY  
  
***********  
  
Faith was waiting to meet Giles at the Damascus Gate after his appointment with the collector who owned the tablet. She sat on a shady bench near the city wall, watching the little market set up near the gate and licking thoughtfully at a popsicle, which was beginning to drip. Damn hot out.   
  
She saw Giles approaching from across the street, and waved casually at him. He was wearing a wide-brimmed, archaeologist hat to keep the sun off.   
  
"Check out Indiana Giles," Faith said when he got close. "Bullwhip come with that outfit?" He gave her a withering look, but one that had a tinge of something else behind it, of hurt or something. They weren't quite back to normal. She winced a little and changed the subject. "So what's the scoop, they going to sell that tablet?"  
  
Giles sighed, sitting down next to her. "No. Not for love or money."  
  
Faith's lips quirked up. "Did you actually try offering love?"   
  
"It very nearly came to that. It turns out they've already sold it, along with several other artifacts, to a buyer in Haifa. Who refuses to resell."  
  
Faith looked at him. "So now what?"   
  
He smiled slightly, then took off his glasses and cleaned them. "Now we try the, er, less legal way of acquiring antiquities."   
  
She grinned. "Awesome," She took a bite of popsicle and chewed thoughtfully. "Won't it be a little suspicious if you go asking about the tablet and then the next day it gets stolen, though? It'll be hard to get out of the country with a warrant out on Rupert Giles."  
  
"Well, I used a pseudonym at the meeting today."   
  
"In case we needed to steal it?" she asked, surprised.  
  
"Of course."  
  
"Giles, you are wicked cool."  
  
**  
  
That night found them both dressed in black and following a car transporting the tablet to Haifa. Faith had a tranquilizer gun across her lap, absently tapping the barrel, and Giles drove one handed, his other arm resting on the edge of the open window. Both were wired, muscles ready to spring. There was a half moon setting in the west.   
  
They reached Haifa and followed the car to a wealthy residential neighborhood outside the city. Giles stopped their rental car just down the block; the two of them quickly exited the car and Faith nailed the driver with the tranq gun as soon as he opened his door. There was no noise; the driver crumpled silently to the pavement.   
  
Faith quickly got in the driver's side of their own car and pulled it up as Giles hurried to the briefcases fallen beside the driver. Within moments he had identified the tablet they needed, removed it from its cushioning molded foam, and gotten back in the car, Faith pulling smoothly away from the curb. The entire operation had taken about a minute and a half.  
  
As Faith turned the corner of the street, Giles suddenly doubled over, making a muffled sound of pain.   
  
"Giles?" she asked, worried. He didn't respond, his breathing labored. "Giles? Are you okay?" She started to pull over.  
  
"No," he choked out. "Keep driving. I'm fine."  
  
"The hell? You are not." But she kept driving, feeling frantic. "What's wrong?"  
  
"It must be a curse," he managed to gasp out. "Protective. On the artifacts." He gasped for breath again. "Should've... anticipated it."   
  
"What do we do?" Faith was driving as fast as she could, weaving in and out of traffic, taking crazy risks and pressing the accelerator.   
  
"I think... must call Willow." He put out an arm to brace himself against the door as Faith took a corner too fast.   
  
"Is it... can you breathe okay?"   
  
"Yes, it's... not my lungs, just... pain. Everywhere." He seemed to be concentrating very hard on not losing self-control, his left hand clenching and unclenching. Faith drove faster.   
  
He let out a low, horribly pained groan a moment later. "Maybe we should go to a hospital," she said, worried.   
  
"No," he said. He didn't seem to have the energy to talk much more. His eyes were closed in his pale face, and his entire body was tensed. The only sound in the car was him gasping for breath.   
  
He didn't react when they pulled up at the hotel.   
  
"Giles, we're here." He looked up, confused, his eyes dilated. "Here, I'll get you." She ran around to his door and helped him out. He could walk, but with pain, and after a few slow moments coming up the walk she put his arm around her shoulders and moved him swiftly to the elevator. She hoped no one noticed that his feet weren't touching the floor.   
  
When they got to the room, she lay him carefully on the bed and ran to the phone. Buffy picked up on the second ring.   
  
"Buffy? I need to talk to Willow."   
  
Buffy immediately caught the tension in Faith's voice. "Faith? What's going on? Is everyone all right?"   
  
"Giles is... he thinks there was this curse and... just put Willow on the line, fast, okay?" One thing about Buffy, she moved quick in an emergency. Willow was on the phone in seconds, and Faith explained the whole situation to her.   
  
"So Giles seemed to think that you'd be able to find a cure for this thing. It's...." She heard Giles trying to talk. "Hold on a second."   
  
"I believe... it's the Anzu curse," he said, his voice strained.   
  
"Did you hear that?" Faith asked Willow. "The Anzu curse." She could hear Willow fumbling with books on the other end.   
  
"Yeah," Willow said. "I think I remember reading about that in the... oh! Here it is. Okay, yeah, there's a cure. It's not a deadly curse, it just inflicts severe pain on the thief until the artifact is returned, unless the counter curse is performed."  
  
"Okay, so how do I do it?"   
  
"I don't think you can - you need to be a pretty powerful witch to perform the spell. But there's a temporary relief thing you can do to stop the pain until you can get him here or to someone else who can do the counter curse. You have to make a salve and apply it to the small of his back. It's just a mix of sage, olive leaves, holy water and... oh, wait. Um. Human blood."   
  
"Okay, I can do that."  
  
"Faith, no. I mean, you can probably find a blood bank or something to get blood. Don't..." Willow trailed off.   
  
Faith was first surprised at the assumption, then angry. "What? You think I'm going to go hurt somebody for this?"   
  
"Well, uh..." Willow sounded apologetic. "How else were you going to get human blood?"  
  
"I was going to use *my* blood, you...." Faith took a deep breath. "I really did reform, you know. And I have to say, I don't go around asking you if you've skinned anyone lately." Willow was quiet for a moment.   
  
"Faith, I..."  
  
"Never mind," Faith said, looking at Giles curled on the bed, his face grimacing in pain. "There's no time to play who was the bigger psycho. Tell me the proportions for this mixture." Willow sighed and did so. "Okay," Faith said. "So I just make the thing, put it on a hotel towel or something, and set it on his back?"  
  
"Yeah. But you'll need to add more holy water every few hours to keep it from drying out. So make sure you get a lot."  
  
"You got it. I'll call you guys back when it's working."   
  
"Okay. And... sorry."  
  
"Yeah," Faith said. "Later." She hung up and moved to the bedside. "Okay, Giles? I'm going to go get the stuff to make this potion thingy to fix you, okay?" He nodded slightly, and she impulsively leaned over and kissed his forehead. "I'll be back soon."   
  
The sage and olive leaves were easy enough to find, and churches were a dime a dozen in Jerusalem. She ended up in St. Anne's, slinking up to the font and making sure no one much was around so that she could fill up a big canteen of holy water. She capped the container quickly, feeling vaguely ridiculous, and slipped out the back.   
  
She was back in the hotel room in a half hour or so, and shut herself in the bathroom with all the stuff. Fumbling in her hurry, she mashed up the sage and olive leaves. Then she took her sharpest knife and, before she could think too much about it, made a quick cut on the inside of her left elbow, letting herself bleed onto one of the towels. When she judged there was enough blood, she bandaged her arm and mixed the leaves and holy water in as well.   
  
It looked disgusting, but as soon as she laid the bloody mess onto Giles's bare back, his face cleared. He gave a long, contented sigh and she could see his tense muscles relax.   
  
"It worked, huh?" she asked, excited. There was no response. "Giles?" She leaned over and found that he had already fallen asleep, exhausted from the hours of pain.   
  
Relieved, she sighed and brushed his hair back from his forehead, then sat heavily in the chair by the bed and closed her eyes for a second. The panic of the evening receded; he was going to be okay. She set the bottle of holy water on the table beside her, ready to put more on the towel if Giles's pain started to come back. But for now his breathing was soft and even, his face open and free of pain.   
  
Her arm throbbed. She began to redo the bandage over her shallow cut.   
  
******  
  
TBC...  
  
******  
  
NOTE: The title of this chapter is from Hebrews 10:22 (New International Version), which says "...without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness." 


	21. Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

Getting Off The Griefmobile  
  
By Annakovsky  
  
See part 1 for all relevant info and disclaimer.  
  
***********  
  
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE  
  
***********  
  
Xander knocked on Willow's door in the afternoon, slipping inside when he heard her listlessly tell him to come in. She was curled up on the window seat in her bedroom, making her body as small as possible and watching the rain coming down outside. She didn't look up.   
  
"Faith just called back," he told her, shutting the door behind him. "Giles is okay, the temporary cure thing worked."   
  
"Oh," Willow said, obviously trying to be cheery and failing miserably. "That's good, that's really good." Xander looked at her, hard.  
  
"Will, you're crying," he said.   
  
"I'm not crying," she said, her voice thick. "It's just, um, sympathy rain."   
  
He looked at her for a minute before his face softened and he smiled ruefully. "Boy, why are you crying?" he asked in an affected, stage-y voice. Willow laughed through her tears. He was quoting Wendy from the Mary Martin version of Peter Pan, which they had watched over and over again when they were five. From the part where Peter's lost his shadow and can't get it to stick to him again.   
  
"I have the opposite problem," she said, smiling painfully. "My shadow sticks too close. Or else I'm the shadow and I've lost the rest of me." Tears were rolling down her face.   
  
"Scoot," Xander said, motioning for her to move up on the seat. She did and he slid in behind her, so she was leaning back against his chest. "What happened?" he asked, putting his arm around her.   
  
"I just... I was sort of horrible to Faith on the phone," she said, sniffling. "I didn't mean to be. It's just that I *am* horrible."   
  
"Willow," he said.   
  
"I am!" she said. "I'm mean-spirited and I tried to kill everyone and I..." she burst into a fresh surge of tears.   
  
Xander rocked her slightly, her clutching his arm. "Silly girl," he murmured. "You were trying to stick it on with soap?" Still quoting Peter Pan, even though he had never exactly understood that part. She just cried and cried.   
  
Xander remembered being a little kid, sitting cross-legged on the green shag rug in Willow's family room and singing along with Mary Martin about how they didn't want to grow up. Remembered the taste of animal crackers and the way Willow's house smelled, like furniture polish and books, and the look of the little red-headed girl sitting next to him. He held her tighter.   
  
"Can you find the rest of me and sew it back on?" she asked finally, barely getting the words out.   
  
"You're still you, Willow," he said. "All of you is here."  
  
"No, I'm not, I'm lost," she said, her voice small and alone, pressed out through a layer of tears.   
  
He held her against his chest, still rocking gently. She was holding onto his hand, playing with his fingers, threading hers through them. He kissed the back of her head. "You're right here," he said softly.   
  
He held her until her breathing steadied and she leaned against him limply, tired. They sat quietly like that for awhile.   
  
"I love you, Xander," she said after a bit, her voice rough and tentative. Something about the way she said it made his heart leap.  
  
"In what sense?" he asked after a second, his voice unsteady.   
  
"All of them," she said. Then she was turning to face him, and then kissing him, and Xander remembered incongruously that the first time they had ever kissed had been in front of Peter Pan, when he gave her a big sloppy wet kiss on the cheek to distract her so he could steal some of her Nilla Wafers.   
  
This kiss wasn't sloppy at all. It was older and wiser and sadder and somehow still them – somehow the little boy and girl on the shag carpet merged into the nerdy high school girl in the dress her mom picked out and the dorky high school boy with his dark hair falling haphazardly over his forehead and those two sixteen year olds merged into the two of them now, adults with shorter hair and sadder eyes, with deaths and evils and heartaches that only they understood. They kissed like the only two refugees from a sunken ship, like the last two survivors in a nuclear winter, like two people whose whole town had disappeared into a crater. And at the same time like five year olds who loved each other more than anyone else.   
  
Xander pulled back to catch his breath and leaned his forehead against hers. "So... this kissing thing... is gonna be, like, a thing?" he asked, very inarticulately.   
  
"Looks that way," she replied.  
  
"Huh," he said, and kissed her again. Funny how easily they fitted together, like they'd been kissing for years. Like home. Except... a home with kissing. And funny how it made him incoherent even inside his own head.   
  
They were still kissing fifteen minutes later, when Dawn yelled that dinner was ready. Holding hands, they went downstairs, smiling sheepishly when they saw Buffy. She looked at their joined hands and beamed at them, a bright Buffy smile they hadn't seen nearly enough of in the past few years.   
  
"You're holding hands," Andrew said, sounding confused. Always Captain Obvious. Then he looked like he'd just remembered something, his eyes lighting up. "Bond girl," he said, nodding knowingly at Xander. Willow, Dawn and Buffy all looked confused.  
  
"You don't want to know," Xander said, moving to sit down at the table. They all settled around it, passing food around the warm circle of light over the table. Everyone kept shooting him and Willow little happy looks, but seemed shy about bringing it up.   
  
"Hey Dawn, how was that movie you guys saw this afternoon?" Xander asked her, wanting to be normal about it.   
  
"Oh my gosh, it was totally great," Dawn said. "I want to start a band now. Andrew's going to play drums."   
  
"Don't you need, like, musical talent to start a band?" Buffy asked dryly. And they were off, everyone talking at once in a big happy jumble.   
  
Xander grinned at Willow across the table. And she grinned back.  
  
******  
  
TBC...  
  
****** 


	22. Old Wounds

Getting Off The Griefmobile  
  
By Annakovsky  
  
See part 1 for all relevant info and disclaimer.  
  
***********  
  
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO  
  
***********  
  
Once she'd relaxed, Faith had the front desk send up a first aid kit, to do a better job of fixing their spell/knife-wound issues. So she exchanged the towel lying messily on Giles's back for a gauze patch, taped on, to let him move around when he woke up. She worked carefully, tearing the tape into exact lengths and cutting the gauze with a neat precision. It seemed important, even though her usual style of bandaging was more along the lines of ripping the medical tape with her teeth and slapping everything together haphazardly. But she was usually bandaging herself.   
  
Which she did next, redoing the binding on the inside of her elbow. She smeared a lot of antibacterial ointment on the cut and hoped she hadn't killed anything really disgusting lately with the knife she'd used to cut herself.   
  
Afterward she put on pajama pants and a tank top and relaxed into the chair by the bed, curling her knees up to her chest. It was late, but she didn't feel like sleeping; the room was dark and comfortable and somehow she liked the feeling of being awake when the rest of the world wasn't. She watched Giles sleep for a long time, until the room gradually grew light with the pearly glow before sunrise. His breaths were even and slow, his back gently rising and falling in a hypnotizing, peaceful rhythm. Breathe in. Breathe out. Inhale. Exhale. Her own breaths slowed to match his.   
  
Sleepy and relaxed, she watched him, the outline of his face, the muscles of his arm. He had scars all over his back. Faith let her eyes trace the lines of old cuts, of what looked like healed over cigarette burns. She felt half horrified, half reassured. Her own scars may mostly be of the emotional variety, but it was sort of weirdly good to find that other people their own old wounds, hidden under their clothes.   
  
She was watching his back, her limbs heavy and relaxed, when she realized that his eyes were open and he was looking at her.   
  
"Hey," she said softly. He smiled a little. They just looked at each other for a minute, Giles sleepy and blinking. "You have scars all over your back," she said, not meaning to. The room had a quiet, calm feel, like it wasn't quite part of the real world. Like anything you said wouldn't really count.   
  
He blinked at her for a minute. "Angelus, mostly," he said at last, his voice still drowsy. "Torture."  
  
"Really?" She was taken aback. "Angel?"   
  
"He needed to know about a ritual," Giles said sleepily. "To destroy the world." He yawned. She looked at him, seeing how bad it must have been from the marks it had left, her internal picture of Angel and Giles changing.  
  
"No one told me," she said finally, inadequately. She shivered, wondering if Wesley still had marks from her session with him.  
  
"I don't suppose they did," he said mildly. "At the time it was nearly the least of our problems." He pushed himself up from the mattress slowly, shifted to a sitting position with the tentative motions of someone who'd run two miles too far the day before.   
  
"I'm sorry," she said, thinking of the blood on Wesley's shirt, of her hand cutting him with a shard of glass.   
  
Giles shrugged a little bit. "Comes with the job." He gingerly tested his sore muscles, rolling his shoulders and flexing his hands. Then he slowly leaned forward, sitting with his arms resting on his knees and his hands dangling casually. He was doing the morning thing, moving slowly and staring into space, only half awake. Graying hair was wiry on his bare chest; he looked solid, and trustworthy, and reliable.   
  
She almost reached out and touched his arm, but didn't.   
  
He sat up straighter after a minute, his arm going around to check on the gauze bandage on his back. "Yeah," she said. "Guess you have to wear that thing until we get back to the States and Willow can do the spell. It still working okay, or does it need more holy water?"  
  
"Hmmm? Oh, no, it's fine. I was just thinking... I believe one of the remaining Watchers is here in Jerusalem. He might be able to do the spell today."   
  
"Yeah?"   
  
"I'll try to get in touch with him later, I suppose," Giles said. Faith nodded. He looked at her, his gaze slow and measuring, still with the unabashed easiness of early morning. His eyes were very green.   
  
The minaret call to prayer started then, its cry stark and unearthly, echoing against buildings. Holy, and far away. They both sat and listened for a moment.  
  
Faith glanced at Giles, who was gazing at the floor with a reflective look on his face. The call was all around them. "I wasn't just messing with you," she said softly, her words almost drowned in the chant. Giles's head came up and he looked at her, all of a sudden very much awake, intense.   
  
"Oh," he said after a minute. His brow furrowed and he looked away, eyes flickering.   
  
They sat in silence as the prayer call ended and all they could hear were birds chirping outside.   
  
"I know you don't want..." Faith started slowly, hesitating. "I get it. I just... thought you should know."   
  
He stared at her, then shook his head as if to clear it, looking away. "It's not that I don't..." he trailed off, before looking up again and meeting her eyes, a cold intensity behind the green. "I'm not a one-night stand, Faith."   
  
"I know," she said, almost pleading and not liking the vulnerability in her own voice. So she smirked. "They're usually a lot more fun."   
  
He looked away, blinked hard, before getting up and beginning to walk away.   
  
"Giles, wait," she said, standing up, her voice back to pleading. He stopped, but didn't turn around. She sighed. "It was a joke. But I guess, um, now isn't really the time, huh?"   
  
He turned, looking at her with the same scary intensity, his Ripper face. "What exactly do you want?"  
  
"I don't know," she said, looking away and running her hand through her hair. "I don't... I know how to fuck, okay? I don't know how to do... whatever the hell this is."  
  
He raised his eyebrows, his face lightening a little bit. "Well, that makes two of us."   
  
She smirked again. "You know how to fuck, too?"  
  
That surprised a laugh out of him, anyway. They stood there looking at each other.   
  
"So?" she asked finally. Her heart was beating absurdly fast - she felt like she was offering herself up to a firing squad. He stood there for an agonizing minute, eyes searching her face.  
  
Then he stepped towards her. Her stomach suddenly felt like she had jumped out of a plane without a parachute, and it was funny how no one had ever mentioned to her how much this kind of thing, whatever the hell it was, felt like fear.   
  
Then he was kissing her and she wasn't thinking about anything else at all.   
  
******  
  
TBC...  
  
******  
  
NOTE: This one goes out to tweedisgood. Giles really does deserve some lovin'. 


	23. The OC

Getting Off The Griefmobile  
  
By Annakovsky  
  
See part 1 for all relevant info and disclaimer.  
  
***********  
  
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE  
  
***********  
  
They had been kissing for awhile, very good kissing, and now Giles had moved to Faith's jaw line, trailing his lips lightly along her skin. It was, like, tender and loving and shit, and Faith was wigging right the hell out.   
  
She put her hands on his chest and pushed, gently, until he moved back, looking at her quizzically.   
  
She gave him her patented, sexy, lips slowly drawing back, eyes lidded, Hang-on-there-just-a-second-tiger-I'll-be-right-with-you look. But he blinked and looked at her weirdly, like he didn't know why she was looking at him like that and like he found the fake sexy look kind of amusing. So she felt stupid and dropped it.  
  
"Uh, sorry to stop the party and all, but we should probably get back to the States with the tablet soon, right?" She tried to sound casual, but her heart was still beating a mile a minute and she wanted badly to run back into her own hotel room.   
  
Giles looked like he was coming back to himself and not liking it much. "Right, yes."  
  
"And boy, do I need a shower."   
  
He nodded. "Of course." He looked over her head, out the window. "You go shower. I'll make the other arrangements."   
  
"Thanks," she said, and leaned up to kiss him quickly, trying to reassure him. He tried not to smile at that, but couldn't quite repress it, with a ridiculously happy looking grin coming out as he ducked his head. Faith hadn't seen him smile like that for awhile, if she ever had. It made her nervous - a little happy, but mostly nervous. This whole thing was way too weird.  
  
Things were awkward when they reconvened post-shower, both of them acting a little oddly. But everything was all set for the trip back. Giles had gotten plane tickets home, as well as set up an appointment with the Watcher in Jerusalem to have the counter-spell done, since he wasn't thrilled with the plan of having wet gauze on his back for the whole long trip back to the States.   
  
They discussed the arrangements over lunch, but their conversation was stilted. Seemed like neither of them knew how they were supposed to act, and they watched each other out of the corners of their eyes, in sideways glances and awkward pauses. Faith's feet brushed his under the table and they both jerked backwards as if they'd gotten an electrical shock.   
  
They headed off to meet the other Watcher after their meal. Faith was glad that Giles wasn't a touchy person in general; if he'd tried to, like, put his arm around her or something she would've freaked. As it was, both of them kept their hands to themselves, jammed into pockets with two feet of distance between them.   
  
It was completely ridiculous.  
  
The Jerusalem Watcher's compound was just outside the Old City, on the edge of the Hinnom Valley. It was walled in, with an iron gate through which they could see a dusty courtyard with a basketball hoop hanging on one stone wall. Watchers playing basketball - the mind boggled. Giles rang the bell, which clanged loudly, though no one appeared. Giles and Faith waited a few minutes, then glanced at each other. Giles was reaching to ring it again when they heard a distinctly American voice call out from behind them.   
  
"Hey! Sorry I'm late." The pair of them turned to see a young, blond guy walking quickly towards them, a messenger bag slung across his chest. "Mr. Giles, right? I talked to you earlier."   
  
"Er, yes, that's right," Giles said, shaking hands with the guy. "This is Faith."  
  
"Jasper Murray," he said, shaking her hand too. "You're a Slayer, right?"  
  
"Yeah. You're a Watcher?" she asked skeptically. Because he was maybe twenty-five, tops, and American, and looked like he belonged in a commercial. Clean cut, with his light blond hair short and sticking up stylishly, wiry but muscular build. If it weren't for the fact that he was on the short side and looked quick and alert instead of like a gyrating Ken doll, he would've fit perfectly in an Old Navy ad, right down to his cargo shorts.   
  
"Well, mostly," he said, turning to unlock the gate and let them in. "I'm in the middle of my thesis, I guess. If any of the old qualification rules even still apply." He pulled the gate open and held it for them, adjusting the strap of his messenger bag with his other hand in an unconscious, habitual motion.   
  
Once into the courtyard, Jasper led them through a door into the building, which was dim and cool, due mostly to the incredibly thick walls, maybe three or four feet deep. The complex appeared to have been a number of different old buildings that had been connected together, since the levels of the stories didn't exactly match up. He led them up a short staircase, around an area that seemed to be a mailroom, up more steps, through a library, out into an open courtyard, then up still more steps, talking all the way.   
  
"Have you ever been here before, Mr. Giles? It's great. Hezekiah's wall actually went right through the library, from what the excavations indicate. This compound was built right over it." Okay, so definitely a Watcher, Faith added mentally, shaking her head as she followed behind the two men.   
  
"You're the only Watcher here?" Faith asked, when he paused for breath.   
  
"Yeah," he said, subdued suddenly. "Some students from the university rent rooms, though. It's a big place." They passed a student on the stairs a minute later, and he said something to her in what Faith assumed was Hebrew.   
  
He finally stopped to unlock an intimidating looking wooden door, ushering them ahead of him into a well-furnished office, with dim lighting, wood paneling and the musty smell of books.   
  
"You guys want anything to drink?" He rubbed the back of his head, looking sheepish. "Uh, tea?"   
  
"Tea would be lovely," Giles said. Jasper looked at Faith.   
  
"No thanks, I'm cool," she said.   
  
He smiled at her, shrugged self-deprecatingly and turned to make the tea. "Take a seat, guys," he said over his shoulder.   
  
"So where're you from, anyway?" Faith asked. "I thought Giles knew your dad."   
  
"Oh yeah, well, Dad's English, the whole Watcher heritage thing. But the WC didn't like him much, so they sent him to Cleveland, where he met my mom. That's where I grew up."   
  
"The WC?" Faith asked. Jasper, leaning against the table waiting for the water to boil, looked embarrassed.   
  
"Watcher's Council. Stupid habit - I started calling it the WC to annoy my dad and now I can't stop." He looked far away for a moment.   
  
"I was terribly sorry to hear about your father," Giles said gently.   
  
Jasper's face was very still, removed. "Thank you," he said. The silence stood for a moment until the tea kettle whistled and Jasper moved to pour it.   
  
"So the Council would send everybody they didn't like to America?" Faith asked, grinning at Giles, who smiled wryly at her.   
  
Jasper shrugged, giving Giles a slightly nervous look as he handed him a cup of tea. "Something like that." Giles smiled at him, but he still looked wary.   
  
"Anyway, uh, so you need the Anzu counter spell performed, right?" Jasper asked, pulling a book off the shelf and beginning to flip through the pages as Giles nodded. "I was looking it over this morning. Here's the thing, though. The spell's tied into the tablet you stole. So if the tablet was in Sumerian, the spell was in Sumerian and the counter spell has to be too. But if the tablet was in Akkadian, then we use the Akkadian version. Which would be much better. My Akkadian's okay, but my Sumerian really blows."  
  
"It was in Akkadian," Giles said, smiling slightly.   
  
"Cool, I already started working on that one. But I think you better check me. No one's ever published a transliteration of this one, and I might've read 'ur' when I should've read 'lik' or something like that. And I don't think you want to have boils all over your face." Faith gave him a dubious look. "Not that that's ever happened before," he added.  
  
Giles bent over the text, looking between Jasper's spiral notebook and the manuscript. The two of them were quickly absorbed, talking about conjugations and shin stems or some such thing. Faith stopped listening pretty quickly and sat back to watch them.   
  
She liked looking at Giles this way, when he wasn't looking back at her. When she could just watch from a distance, enjoy the way he ran his hand over his hair, how he cleaned his glasses. The slight stubble on his chin, the line of his jaw, the crinkles around his eyes. She liked watching him intent on the page, arguing with Jasper over a reading of the complicated triangles and lines, animated and intent in a different sort of way than he was with her.   
  
He glanced up at her in the middle with a slightly apologetic smile, a private sort of smile, before looking back down at the text. She was immediately uncomfortable. Giles always looked at her like she was someone who mattered, a person, not just a sex object or a fighting machine. It was unnerving. After all, what were her boobs *for* if not distracting people? Besides, she knew she'd let him down pretty damn soon.  
  
Her mouth was dry, so she reached over to pick up Giles's cup, sipping at the tea. Jasper looked up at her at that moment, his eyes moving from her to the teacup to Giles, obviously putting pieces together quickly. His eyebrows rose slightly and Faith realized that she'd just indicated that she and Giles were awfully intimate without even thinking about it. Jasper didn't look shocked or anything, though. He held her gaze for a second, inquisitive, then looked at Giles thoughtfully before returning his eyes to the text. Faith could feel herself getting red.   
  
Jesus, what would happen when the Scoobs found out about this? Obviously it couldn't be a secret for very long, if this guy'd already figured it out. It might take the Sunnydale crew a little longer to catch on, since they seemed to think of Giles as neutered and all, but they weren't complete idiots.   
  
Buffy was going to have an aneurysm. There was no way this could work.   
  
"Okay then," Jasper was saying. "Guess we're all set. Except for the hokey candle lighting and chanting. I'll run down to the kitchen and grab some salt for the circle. Give me a sec." And he was out the door, loping down the stairs. Giles looked at her and smiled. She couldn't help smiling back, but looked down, hating to say it.  
  
"I don't think this is going to work."   
  
"Why not? I'm quite sure the transliteration is correct and..."  
  
"Not the spell," she interrupted. "This." She was staring at the carpet, working at a loose thread with the toe of her boot.   
  
"Oh," he said. She didn't look at him, and didn't say anything. He got up and paced around the room a bit. When she looked up, he was cleaning his glasses thoughtfully. "Eight hours isn't really much of a try," he said mildly, settling his glasses back on his nose. For some reason this answer made her feel a little better.   
  
"Point," she admitted.   
  
"Say we give it at least twenty-four?" he asked, sounding like he was teasing her a little bit. A smile was playing around his lips.   
  
She smiled sheepishly and nodded. "Okay, but just for the record, I'm kind of wigging out."   
  
"I'm not precisely calm myself."   
  
She grinned at him and he looked like he was about to come over and kiss her again, when Jasper came through the door, oblivious.  
  
"Okay, salt, check. Weird herbal candles, check. Hopefully correctly transliterated manuscript, check. Let's get started."   
  
Faith went over to one corner of the room and watched the little ritual. Pretty standard magic, nothing too exciting. Not even any weird lights or glowing colors or anything. They just lit the candles, Giles stood in the circle, Jasper chanted some stuff, and...  
  
"That was it?" Faith asked. Jasper shrugged and nodded. Giles was peeling the gauze off his back, looking more relaxed than he'd been since they'd stolen the stupid thing.   
  
"That's much better," he said to Jasper. "The temporary cure wasn't nearly as effective. I hadn't even realized there was still residual pain until it lifted."   
  
"Glad I could help," Jasper replied. "Especially glad I didn't accidentally set you on fire or anything." They all started walking downstairs, Faith trailing behind the two men, who were talking about Watcher business.   
  
"You'll of course be coming to the States when the remnants of the Council reconvene in September?" Giles asked.  
  
"Definitely. I'm excited to start rebuilding everything, I have a few ideas about how to make better use of some of our resources...."  
  
They were still talking when they made it down to the gate.   
  
"Pleasure meeting you," Giles said, shaking Jasper's hand. "Send my regards to your mother."   
  
"Sure," he said. He turned to Faith and shook hands with her too. "Good luck," he said meaningfully, motioning his head a bit towards Giles and smiling faintly.   
  
"You too," Faith said, ignoring his implication. He grinned at her.   
  
She and Giles headed up the sandy cobblestone road towards the Old City, still two feet apart, but comfortably so, somehow. The iron gate of the Watcher's compound clanged shut behind them.   
  
*****  
  
TBC...  
  
*****  
  
Notes: I have an unfortunate tendency to write my homework into my fanfic. Damn that one sign - why do you have to stand for 'ur' AND 'lik' AND 'tas' AND like fifty other things? Make up your friggin' mind! 


	24. Danger as a Lifestyle Choice

Getting Off The Griefmobile  
  
By Annakovsky  
  
See part 1 for all relevant info and disclaimer.  
  
***********  
  
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR  
  
***********  
  
Giles was reflective after their encounter with Murray's son. Murray had been two years ahead of him at school; he remembered him with a kind of younger schoolboy awe, picturing him mentally as one of the older, confident boys, good at games. The top swimmer in his year, if he remembered correctly. He had only known him slightly as an adult; he had seemed a competent man, a good man. His body had been one of those dug out of the rubble left after the explosion of the Council's headquarters. Giles had identified what was left of him.   
  
It felt as though he had spent his entire year identifying remains. Looking back, the past ten months appeared as a dizzying succession of international flights, dazed, sleepless nights, and continually arriving too late. Arriving to find the bloody corpses of teenage girls or of men and women who had been his colleagues.  
  
He remembered a time, not long before, when a room smeared with the blood of those he had known had made him vomit. Now he felt nothing but very weary.  
  
During the time he had spent in Sunnydale, he had hardly felt like himself. When he closed his eyes he saw blood. His mouth tasted of ashes and in secret he drank more than he ought. He was dazed, foggy-headed from grief and lack of sleep.   
  
For he did grieve the Council's loss. Despite its arrogance, uselessness and general archaism, he had spent the greater part of his life working with and for them. They were old family friends and twenty-odd years worth of colleagues; twenty-odd years of consultations over manuscripts, debates over procedure, friendly office conversation. And now nearly all of them were dead.  
  
He felt much the way he had when Diedre, Philip and Thomas had been killed, leaving himself and Ethan the only survivors of their foolhardy group. No matter that he hadn't seen them in twenty years; it had shaken him. It's never easy to have an entire section of your life wiped out.   
  
And now again - no matter how much he had often loathed Quentin Travers, the man had always been there and now he was not. Nor were Donaldson or Mallory or Bingham or Pritchard or dozens of others. And it was rather an empty world.  
  
They had walked almost all the way up to the Jaffa Gate of the Old City when Faith finally spoke.  
  
"So today's our last day here, right?" she asked.  
  
"Yes," he said distractedly. "Our flight leaves Tel Aviv tomorrow morning."   
  
"Then we should... I dunno. Do something tourist-y. You wanna go up on the wall and walk around?"   
  
He glanced at her. "If you like." They were at the gate now, and he paid a small fee to let them both up to the top of the city wall. There was room for two people to walk abreast there in a sort of corridor between the high tops of the wall, which reached over their heads and were notched with waist-high crenellations, providing spaces through which one could view the city and countryside.   
  
"Hot out, huh?" Faith said after a moment. It was, in fact, very hot - another Middle Eastern summer day, without a cloud in sight. The sky was bleached out around the horizon, pale blue, and he was squinting in the sun.   
  
"Yes," he said. He was still remembering horrors, thinking of those lost. When he glanced at her she was looking at him tentatively, as if trying to feel out his mood. She looked uncomfortable at catching his eye.   
  
"Sorry about freaking out earlier," she muttered, looking down.   
  
He immediately lightened, turning towards her, trying to be reassuring. "Don't be."   
  
Faith shrugged. "Whatever." They had walked to a turn in the wall, and she leaned into one of the crenellations, looking out at the landscape, silver-topped olive trees and dusty roads stretching out below them. She fiddled with a loose brick. "Is this the part where we have to have a big discussion about our relationship or something?"   
  
Giles smiled wryly and leant beside her, the bricks rough under his arms. "Do you think we should?"   
  
"God, no," she said quickly. He smiled, turning to lean against the wall and gaze at her. She fidgeted uncomfortably, still staring out at the valley below them as she chewed on her lower lip. He wanted to kiss her again. "Except..." she started. He waited for her to continue, but she didn't.   
  
"Yes?" he finally prompted.  
  
"This... there's just no way, you know? I mean, it's nice. It's very... yeah. But you're kidding yourself if you think this is going to end all happily-ever-after."   
  
"What makes you think I think that?" he asked, raising his eyebrows. He thought of burying Jenny, of burying Buffy, of burying Randall, of burying Quentin bloody Travers, and how far away from happily-ever-after life always was.   
  
"Well, you... I don't know, what, are you saying you think this is going to suck?" she looked confused, then almost offended.   
  
"No, it's just..." he sighed and took off his glasses, rubbing his eyes. He spoke slowly and deliberately. "Active Watchers have nearly as low a life-expectancy as their Slayers. You have already seen your Watcher die; I've buried my Slayer. We have to face facts." He looked at her wearily.   
  
"Oh," she said.   
  
"Not to mention," he said, "that it is always risky for either Watchers or Slayers to fall in love. It gives us so much to lose." Jenny, he thought. I am still so sorry.  
  
"Xander told me about Angel killing your girlfriend," she said softly.   
  
He closed his eyes. "Yes. Anyone who wishes to hurt us will invariably target those who mean the most to us."   
  
"Yeah," she said, moving back and slumping against the far wall.   
  
"This will almost certainly end badly. In fact, for us, loving is perhaps the most dangerous and foolhardy thing we could possibly do."  
  
She was looking at him with wide open, hurting eyes, big and brown.   
  
"And the bravest," he added.   
  
She held his gaze for a long moment, looking so young and beautiful and fragile it hurt. Deceptively fragile - he knew how strong she was, how she didn't need to be protected.  
  
"Risky and stupid and brave are three things I get called a lot," she said finally, stepping towards him.  
  
"I know," he said, smiling slightly. The sun was hot on his face and all the colors of the world were washed out except for her, standing there vibrant, tan and alive. She tasted of sunlight and salt when she pushed him against the wall, bricks rubbing roughly against his back, and her hands, on his face and the nape of his neck, were sun-warmed like baked stones.  
  
*****  
  
TBC...  
  
***** 


	25. Reasons to Stay

Getting Off The Griefmobile  
  
By Annakovsky  
  
See part 1 for all relevant info and disclaimer.  
  
***********  
  
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE  
  
***********  
  
After lunch, Buffy poked her head into Xander's workroom, at the top of the house.   
  
He glanced up from what he was working on, sandpaper in one hand. "Hey, you're back. How was your trip to the principal's office?"  
  
"Good," Buffy said, walking into the room. It smelled of sawdust, a good, clean smell, one she associated with Xander. She went over to the big window and perched sideways on the windowsill, in the sunlight. "Dawn's all signed up for the fall. School starts next Wednesday."   
  
"Wow. That was fast."  
  
"I know, the summer flew by," Buffy said, pulling her knees up and leaning back against the window frame. It was bright outside, and the sun was pleasantly warm on her bare legs.   
  
"School starting always makes me twitchy," Xander said. "That adrenaline feel, you know? Back to the ol' demon grindstone."   
  
"Yeah," Buffy said. "But I think it'll be different here. Like, when I was talking to the principal I asked him what the student death rate was, and he looked at me like I was crazy!"   
  
Xander grinned, looking up at her. "You asked him what the death rate was?"  
  
"Well, these are things I want to know," Buffy said sheepishly, beaming back at him. A camera clicked from the doorway, capturing the moment, and she looked up to see Dawn framed there, smiling.   
  
"Gotcha!" Dawn said, then giggled and scampered off. She had been taking pictures constantly since Buffy'd caved and got her a digital camera, and no place was safe. She had the prints all over her room, taped to the walls. Her and Andrew, down at the river, grinning at the camera she was holding out at arm's length, faces squished together. Willow and Xander kissing – then next to that, Willow and Xander looking embarrassed and a little annoyed. Buffy sunbathing on the lawn, gazing skeptically at the camera over the top of a "People" magazine, sunglasses tipped down on her nose.   
  
Buffy rolled her eyes and Xander suppressed a grin as they heard Dawn clump down the stairs.  
  
"So you think Dawn'll like this school?" Xander asked.   
  
"Probably not," Buffy said. "I mean, it's high school. But at least she'll hate it because that skank Meryl was totally macking on her boyfriend, not because they just found another dead body in the locker room."  
  
"Meryl?" Xander asked, amused.  
  
"Or whoever," Buffy said. Xander shook his head and started to fit together some of the wood pieces he'd carved.   
  
"What're you making?" Buffy asked.   
  
"Rocking chair," Xander said. "That store over in Middletown ordered a bunch more. I guess the last ones were really popular." He shrugged self-deprecatingly, smiling a little bit.  
  
"Xander! That's great."  
  
He smiled a little wider. "Can't do construction with only one eye, but at least I can still do this." He traced the grain of the wood with his thumb. "Thinking of leasing store space, maybe."   
  
"Wow," Buffy said. "That's, like, a career."  
  
"Not as glamorous as yours, maybe, but I like it," Xander said, taking out a tool and using it to flake off little bits of one wood piece, smooth it out so it would fit better.   
  
"My career?" Buffy said ruefully. "What would that be?"  
  
Xander looked up, surprised. "Slaying. Training the new Slayers. Setting up the new Watcher stuff. Et cetera."   
  
"That's really more of a hobby. Or a sacred duty," Buffy said self-consciously.   
  
Xander stared at her. "Now you're just talking crazy talk. Aren't you going to be head of a new Slayer school and all that stuff you and Giles were talking about?"   
  
"Well, yeah, but..."  
  
"What's more of a career than that?" Xander asked.  
  
Buffy shrugged. "I guess so. I hadn't thought of it that way." She watched Xander sand down the bit he had just carved, then move to compare it to the others. There was a kind of Zen calm to watching Xander work – the physicality of it, the quiet beauty of the wood. "Oh, speaking of Giles, he called earlier. Did Willow tell you? They're flying in tomorrow afternoon."   
  
"Mission accomplished?"  
  
"Yup. So all we have to do now is meet with the Powers and convince them to make the First back off."  
  
Xander waved his hand dismissively. "Details."   
  
***  
  
After her conversation with Xander, Buffy headed downstairs to the library to see what Willow was up to. But as she descended the front stairs to the ground floor, she was suddenly certain that she saw Spike at the bottom, looking up at her with his head tilted slightly and that expression of wondering adoration he sometimes had – the way, in fact, that he had looked up at her that night she had come back from the dead.   
  
He was only there for an instant and then disappeared, but the sight of him rattled her. Most of all because it left her hoping to see him again.   
  
Who knew what that amulet had done, anyway? Spike could be anywhere, doing anything. Trying to get back to her, or to give her a message.   
  
She didn't tell anyone that she had seen him at the bottom of the stairs. And later, when she was outside sitting on the deck and he appeared thirty yards from her, very pale in the sunlight, his arms stretching towards her, she started up, ready to try to reach him. But he was gone before she had even taken a step.  
  
At dinner, she was distracted and distant.   
  
"Buffy? Buffy?" Dawn said. "Buffy!"  
  
"Huh? What?" Buffy said.   
  
"Peas."   
  
"Peace? What about peace?"  
  
"Buffy. Pass. The. Peas."  
  
"Oh," she said, passing them. "Right." She started when she saw Spike's face pressed against the glass for a moment.   
  
"You okay, Buffy?" Willow asked.   
  
"Huh? Sure. Yeah. Of course."   
  
She looked around the table, at Andrew and Dawn, at Xander and Willow, and felt very much like a fifth wheel. At least Giles and Faith were coming home tomorrow.   
  
*****  
  
TBC...  
  
***** 


End file.
